MEN WITH A MISSION 



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MEN WITH A MISSION, 



WILLIAM TYNDALE. 



MEN WITH A MISSION, 

New Series of Popular Biographies. 



Illustrated. Small Crown 8vo. 
Price Fifty Cents each. 

HENRY MORTON STANLEY. 
CHARLES KINGSLEY. 
HUGH LATIMER. 
WILLIAM TYNDALE. 

In Preparation. 
JOHN HOWARD. 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
LORD LAWRENCE. 
DAVID LIVINGSTONE. 




WILLIAM TYNDALE. 



MEN WITH A MISSION. 



William 




le. 



REV. JAMES J. ELLIS, 



AUTHOR OF 

"THE MESSAGES OF CHRIST," "HARNESS FOR A PAIR," "HENRY MORTON STANLEY,' 
ETC. ETC. 



4 Thou hast left behind 
Powers that will work for thee ; earth, air, and skies, 
There's not a breathing of the common wind 
That will forget thee ; thou hast great allies ; 
Thy friends are exultations, agonies, 
And love, and man's unconquerable mind." 

— Wordsworth. 



NEW YORK: 

THOMAS WHITTAKER ; 

2 & 3 Bible House. 



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PRINTED IN ENGLAND. 



8y Iransfcr 
**J* I 19* 



PREFACE. 



" I HAVE surveyed most of the learning found among 
the sons of men," said the learned Seldon, " but I 
can stay my soul upon none of them but the 
Bible;" and precisely similar has been the experi- 
ence of many others. 

The Bible is in the Scripture declared to be 
that which the Holy Spirit" employs both in con- 
version and in sanctifieation ; &*is therefore needful 
above all things that we should know our Bibles 
well. Nothing can compensate for the want of 
this, and at the same time a spiritual knowledge 
of the Scriptures will often atone for natural defi- 
ciencies, both in mental equipment and in social 
position. 

The man, therefore, who brings the Bible to 
bear efficiently upon the hearts and lives of his 



viii PREFACE. 

fellow- creatures is the true servant of God ; what 
then shall be said in praise of William Tyndale ? 

Before his day such copies of Wycliffe's Version 
as still survived could only be consulted in secret ; 
they were but few in number, and the language 
in which they were written had become obsolete. 
Tyndale conceived the bold idea of translating the 
Scriptures so that the poorest might be able to 
obtain and to understand them. 

For this noble object he lived and died, and 
Englishmen should never forget that the priceless 
boon of an open Bible, which is the secret source 
of our national liberties and success, was paid for 
by Tyndale with his blood. 

Tyndale does not regret the purchase now, for 
although duty exacts a heavy fine, it more than 
repays those who give up all things that they 
may possess her. 

Harringay, London N., 1890. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 

THE APOSTLE OF ENGLAND; OR, THE MAN WHO 
IS FORGOTTEN BECAUSE OF HIS SUCCESS. 

PAGE 
u puT IT QN THE SHELF j »_ A BLANK WORLD— CLEVER- 
NESS NO CREDIT — THE FARMER'S SON — NEW LIGHT 
FROM THE OLD CHRONICLES— THE MIDNIGHT DARK- 
NESS AND THE MORNING STAR I 

CHAPTER II. 

THE SCHOLAR WHO OUTSTRIPPED HIS 
TEACHER. 

HARD FARE MAKES FIRM MEN— WHAT ERASMUS WISHED, 
AND TYNDALE ACCOMPLISHED — WEALTH MADE 
THE TEST OF TRUTH— A MAN OF PUTTY HELPING 
A MAN OF IRON — DRIVEN AWAY, BUT NOT CON- 
QUERED II 

CHAPTER III. 

MARKING THE COURSE OF THE WORLD ; OR, 
LEARNING WHOM NOT TO TRUST. 

NO ROOM FOR A BIBLE IN THE BISHOP'S PALACE— THE 
MERCHANT'S HOUSE A HOME — MONMOUTH'S GRA- 
CIOUS CHARACTER — AN EXILE FOR CONSCIENCE' SAKE 23 



x CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER IV. 

AN EXILE, YET IN HIS FATHER'S LAND. 

PAGE 
HELPED BY LUTHER— FINDING A COMPANION— A BOLD 

VENTURE — DRIVEN AWAY — BURNING THE BIBLE 

DOES NOT DESTROY IT ...... 30 



CHAPTER V. 

A MAN WITHOUT A PATTERN, BUT WITH 
MANY IMITATORS. 

CURIOSITIES OF TRANSLATION— ANCIENT VERSIONS— THE 
BOOK THAT TURNS THE HEART INSIDE OUT— TYN- 
DALE'S QUALIFICATIONS— HIS PUNGENT GLOSSES . 40 



CHAPTER VI. 

HATED BY THE CARDINAL, BUT WORKING 
FOR GOD. 

LEAVES WORMS FOR MARBURG— FARTHER FROM ROME, 
YET NEARER TO THE TRUTH— "THE WICKED MAM- 
MON" AND "THE OBEDIENCE OF A CHRISTIAN MAN" 
— READ BY KING HENRY — "THE PRACTICE OF PRE- 
LATES " — NOTES ON THE PENTATEUCH ... 56 



CHAPTER TIL 

NOT SECOND TO A GLADIATOR; OR, STRONG 
FOR THE TRUTH. 

SIR THOMAS MORE THE ADVOCATE OF THE BISHOPS — 
TYNDALE'S CRUSHING REPLY— MORE'S GROSS ABUSE 
AND FOUL LANGUAGE — PUBLIC OPINION WITH 
TYNDALE 73 



CONTENTS, 



CHAPTER VIII. 

BRIBES AND BAIT; OR, THE FLY WHO WOULD 
NOT ENTER THE SPIDER'S WEB. 

PAGE 
ATTEMPTS TO INDUCE TYNDALE TO RETURN TO ENG- 
LAND—THE INTERVIEW IN THE MEADOW — TYN- 
DALE'S PATHETIC APPEAL AND HIS NOBLE OFFER . 79 

CHAPTER IX. 

A FRIEND UNTO DEATH; OR, COMFORTING 
A SUFFERER. 

THE BOOK OF JONAH TRANSLATED— POWER LENT BY 
GOD — WANDERING BUT WORKING — COMFORTING 
FRYTH— FRYTH'S NOBLE DEFENCE — TYNDALE'S MODE 
OF LIFE . .87 

CHAPTER X. 

TRAPPED AT LAST; OR, DYING FOR THE TRUTH. 

THE QUEEN'S BIBLE— THE TRAITOR— THE TRAP— THE 

WEARY YEAR OF IMPRISONMENT — THE TRIUMPH . q8 



WILLIAM TYNDALE, 



CHAPTEE I. 

THE APOSTLE OF ENGLAND; OR, THE MAN WHO 
IS FORGOTTEN BECAUSE OF HIS SUCCESS. 

" How seldom, friend, a good, great man inherits 
Honour or wealth, with all his toil and pains ! 
It sounds like stories from the land of spirits, 
If any man obtain that which he merits, 
Or any merit that which he obtains." 

— COLEEIDGE. 

" Did you ever sit and look at a handsome or well-made man, 
and thank God from your heart for having allowed you such a 
privilege and lesson ? " — Kingsley. 

"There is an inscrutability of truth which sometimes increases 
its power, while we wait with solemn reverence for the hour when 
it shall be fully revealed to us ; and our faith, like the setting sun, 
may clothe celestial mysteries with a soft and rosy- coloured light, 
which makes them more suitable to our present existence." — 
Cheevee. 



" PUT IT ON THE SHELF ! "—A BLANK WORLD !— CLEVERNESS 
NO CEEDIT — THE FARMER'S SON — NEW LIGHT FROM THE 
OLD CHRONICLES— THE MIDNIGHT DARKNESS AND THE 
MORNING STAR. 

" I have long adopted an expedient which I have 
found of singular service to me/' said Eichard 

a 



2 MEN WITH A MISSION. 

Cecil. "I have a shelf in my study for tried 
authors, and one in my mind for tried principles 
and characters. 

" When an author has stood a thorough examina- 
tion and will bear to be taken as a guide, I put him 

ON THE SHELF ! 

" When I have most fully made up my mind on a 
principle, I put it on the shelf ! 

" When I have turned a character over and over 
on all sides, and seen it through and through in all 
situations, I PUT IT on the shelf ! " 

William Tyndale is a man whose character may 
be placed upon the shelf, for he and his life have 
successfully endured the test of the ages that have 
in turn examined him, and sometimes not with the 
kindest of feelings. It is difficult for us to estimate 
adequately the magnitude of his success, because 
the whole current of religious life has changed since 
his time, and mainly because of what he accom- 
plished. A great writer has imagined what would 
occur if some morning every sentence of the Scrip- 
tures were obliterated both from the printed page 
and from the minds of men ; he believes that a hlanh 
Bible would mean' a hlank world, and that was largely 
the moral condition of things into which Tyndale was 
born. There was no Bible, at least in circulation, 
and therefore there were ignorance, tyranny, hopeless- 
ness, and discord. The Eeformation was not only 
a bringing-in of a new life beyond the grave, it also 
gave fresh hope and meaning to the existence on 



THE APOSTLE OF ENGLAND. 3 

this side of death; so that commercial enterprise 
and national liberty are products of that period. 

Frith, in his amusing autobiography, tells us of 
a picture-dealer who said of Dickens and his 
writings, " He couldn't help writing 'em. He de- 
serves no credit for that. He a clever man ! Let 
him go and sell a lot of pictures to a man that 
don't want 'em, as I have done lots of times ; that's 
what I call being a clever man ! " 

The same has practically been long felt if not 
expressed about William Tyndale, for it is only of 
late years that his supreme ability has been ad- 
mitted. Yet he was undoubtedly a great man ; 
Foxe calls him " the true servant and martyr of 
God, who, for his notable pains and travail, may 
well be called the Apostle of England." Tyndale 
is rightly so called, for he, in spite of the Bishops, 
gave to the world a book which they did not desire, 
and in so doing he did more for the English Eefor- 
mation than the KinGf and Parliament combined. 

Of the early days of this great man but very little 
is known. Foxe, in his Life of William Tyndale, 
says that he " was born about the borders of Wales, 
and brought up from a child in the University of 
Oxford, where he, by long continuance, grew up 
and increased as well in the knowledge of tongues 
and other liberal arts, as especially in the know- 
ledge of the Scriptures, whereunto his mind was 
singularly addicted, insomuch that he, lying then in 
Magdalen Hall, read privily to certain students and 



4 MEN WITH A MISSION. 

fellows of Magdalen College some parcel of divinity ; 
instructing them in the knowledge and truth of the 
Scriptures. His manners also and conversation, 
being correspondent to the same, were such that all 
they that knew him reputed and esteemed him to 
be a man of most virtuous disposition and of life 
unspotted. Thus he, in the University of Oxford, 
increasing more and more in learning and proceed- 
ing in degrees of the schools, spying his time, re- 
moved from thence to the University of Cambridge, 
where, after he had likewise made his afrode a cer- 
tain space, being now further ripened in the know- 
ledge of God's Word, leaving that University also, 
he resorted to one Master Welch, a knight of Glou- 
cestershire." In these few lines Foxe concentrates 
the history of several years, and these were years of 
supreme interest and importance both to the man 
and to us. Nor has subsequent research done very 
much to fill in this gap, although one or two things 
are now clear to us. 

It was for a long time believed that William 
Tyndale was a son of Thomas Tyndale of Hunts 
Court, the manor-house of North Nibley, a village in 
Gloucestershire. Accordingly a monument has been 
erected upon Nibley Knoll (one of the Cotswold 
Hills) in his honour — a noble column which is still 
conspicuous from far in that pleasant country. But 
it has been shown that this could not have been, 
and that not to the manor-house, but to a farmhouse, 
must w 7 e look for the birthplace of our hero. At 



THE APOSTLE OF ENGLAND. 5 

Melksham Court, in the parish of Stinchcornbe, there 
had long lived a family of Tyndales, who, it is said, 
had originally come from the North of England. This 
was during the Wars of the Eoses, and in order to 
elude the proscription which in turn visited the 
adherents of each house, these Tyndales assumed 
the name of Hutchins. 

It is probable that these farmers, whose lands 
were principally swamps that had been reclaimed 
from the Severn, were the ancestors of William 
Tyndale. The Tyndales of North Mbley were, 
however, probably relatives of these farmers. The 
precise date of William Tyndale's birth cannot be 
stated, but from the fact that, in his reply to Sir 
Thomas More, Tyndale said, " These things to be 
even so M. More knoweth well enough, for he 
understandeth the Greek, and he knew them long 
ere I did," it is inferred that More was at least 
some years the elder. More was born in the year 
1478 A.D., and therefore it is conjectured that 
about 1480 was the date of Tyndale's birth. Of 
Slymbridge, his probable birthplace, Demaus says 
that it " was then, as now, wholly engrossed in the 
production of cheese and butter ; a quiet agricul- 
tural parish, where life would flow on calmly as 
the great river that formed its boundary. The 
dairymaid was the true annalist of Slymbridge ; 
and the only occurrence beyond drought which 
would distress the peaceful population would be 
occasional predatory incursions of their lawless 



6 MEN WITH A MISSION. 

neighbours from the Forest of Dean, which waved 
in hills of verdure towards the west, as a pic- 
turesque counterbalance to the Cotswolds in the 
east. Such a place one naturally associates with 
stagnant thought and immemorial tradition." 1 

One would have been thankful for an account of 
the home life of the Tyndales, and especially for some 
information about the two parents. We can imagine 
the grave, sober farmer given up to religious ob- 
servances like his neighbours, thinking grimly 
but silently of the evils which he saw in the 
Churches around him ; perhaps also with a tinge 
of Lollardism as carefully concealed as might be. 
And the sober, diligent mother, not wholly occupied 
with the pursuits of the farm, but thinking high 
thoughts about God and life, that from time to 
time she communicated to her sons. From what 
we know of their children, we must form a high 
estimate of the parents. 

Four sons, it would seem, formed the family group, 
and they were named respectively Eichard Tyndale 
(who succeeded to the farm), Edward Tyndale, Wil- 
liam the Martyr, and John Tyndale, a merchant in 
London. 

It is a fact that the last named was fined for 
sending money to his brother William when the 
latter was abroad, and for aiding him in the cir- 
culation of the Scriptures, so that in all proba- 
bility the brothers were of one mind in religious 

1 Demaus' " William Tyndale, a Biography." 



THE APOSTLE OF ENGLAND. 7 

opinions. One brother, Edward Tyndale, was ap- 
pointed receiver of the revenues of Berkley, which 
had been left to the Crown in the year 1492, so 
that he at anyrate was fairly well-to-do. 

Tyndale himself, in his " Obedience of a Christian 
Man," to which reference will be further made later 
on in this biography, makes the following allusion 
to his own childhood : — " Except my memory fail 
me, and that I have forgotten what I read when I 
was a child, thou shalt find in the English Chronicle, 
how that King Adelstone (Athelstone) caused the 
Holy Scripture to be translated into the tongue that 
then was in England, and how prelates exhorted him 
thereto." 

We may therefore suppose that the child was 
taught at home in the ancient records of the King- 
dom, and perhaps his attention was called by his 
father to the significant fact that then the Scriptures 
could not be read by the people, whereas this had 
been permitted in earlier days. It is singular that 
the boy should have noticed such a fact, and it 
suggests that some one significantly indicated it to 
him. It is certain that a strong sympathy for the 
opinions of Wycliffe and his followers existed all 
through the West of England, and probably William 
Tyndale's father hinted to his sons what he did not 
dare to speak out to others. And there were also 
here and there, men, in monasteries, vicarages, and 
dwelling-houses, who were beginning to discern the 
coming dawn. 



8 MEN WITH A MISSION. 

" Midnight being past/' says Fuller, " some early 
risers were beginning to strike lire and enlighten 
themselves from the Scriptures/' And there was 
indeed great need for them to do so, for the religious 
condition of England was at that time lamentable. 

As an example of the dissoluteness of the national 
manners, and principally amongst the clergy, it is said 
of Mr. Edmund Loud, a gentleman of rank in Hunt- 
ingdonshire, that he " was disgusted at the dissolute 
lives of the monks of Sawtry, an abbey in his neigh- 
bourhood, and even ventured to chastise one of them 
who had insulted his daughter. For this, and other 
circumstances, they determined to be revenged ; and 
he was waylaid and assaulted by six men, tenants 
of the abbey. He defended himself with a bill- 
hook for some time, till a constable came up and 
stopped the fray, and Mr. Loud was required to give 
up his weapon. They then proceeded peaceably 
with the constable ; but, watching an opportunity, 
as Mr Loud was crossing a stile, one seized him by 
the arms, while another fractured his skull with the 
blow of a club, and he died seven days afterwards. 
The murderers escaped, and the influence of the 
Eomish clergy prevented the matter being properly 
followed up." 

Dr. Henry in his history of this period observes, 
however, that " there was one vice, indeed, which 
the clergy most zealously endeavoured to extirpate. 
This was what they called the damnable vice of 
heresy, which consisted in reading the New Testa- 



THE APOSTLE OF ENGLAND. 9 

meat in English, the works of Wickliff and Luther, 
and of others of that learning ; in denying the in- 
fallibility of the Pope, transubstantiation, purgatory, 
praying to saints, worshipping images, &c. Not- 
withstanding the cruel punishments that had been 
inflicted on those who entertained these opinions, 
their number was still considerable, particularly in 
London, and in Colchester, and in other parts of Essex. 
They called themselves Brethren in Christ, and met 
together with great secrecy in one another's houses, 
to read the New Testament and other books, and to 
converse upon religious subjects. Many of them 
were apprehended, and brought before Cuthbert 
Tonstall, bishop of London, and Dr. Wharton, his 
chancellor. But Bishop Tonstall, being a prelate 
of uncommon learning and eloquence, and of great 
humanity, earnestly tried to prevail upon them to 
renounce, or rather to dissemble, their opinions, by 
which they escaped a painful death, but incurred 
the painful reproaches of their minds." 

As a specimen of those who were brought before 
the tribunals, take these cases : — 

" Elizabeth Wightil deposed against her mistress, 
Alice Doly, that speaking of John Hacher, a water- 
bearer in Coleman Street, London, she said he was so 
very expert in the Gospels and the Lord's Prayer in 
English, that it did her good to hear him. She was 
also said to have heretical books in her possession. 

" Eoger Hackman, of Oxfordshire, was accused for 
saying in the county of Norfolk, ' I will never look 



io MEN WITH A MISSION. 

to be saved for any good deed that ever I did, 
neither for any that I shall ever do, unless I have 
my salvation by petition, as an outlaw pardoned by 
the king ; ' adding, ' that if he might not have his 
salvation so, he thought he should be lost/ " If such 
doctrine as this was condemned, we cannot wonder 
at hearing of " certain heretical books called the 
Epistles and Gospels." 

The darkness was indeed thick, but happily the 
dawning was at hand. 



CHAPTEE II. 

THE SCHOLAR WHO OUTSTRIPPED HIS 
TEACHER. 

"Meek souls there are who little deem 
Their daily strife an Angel's theme, 
Or that the rod they take so calm 
Shall prove in heaven a martyr's palm." 

— Keble. 

"The voice of Nature never goes to the heart until it blend with 
the voice of Scripture." — Philip. 

" It is by celestial observation alone that terrestrial charts can 
be constructed." — Oolekidge. 



HARD FAKE MAKES FIRM MEN— WHAT ERASMUS WISHED, AND 
TYNDALE ACCOMPLISHED— WEALTH MADE THE TEST OF 
TRUTH— A MAN OF PUTTY HELPING A MAN OF IRON- 
DRIVEN AWAY, BUT NOT CONQUERED. 

At an early age William Tyndale was sent to 
Oxford, where he was entered at Magdalen Hall. 
Here we can perhaps picture him from the words 
of Thomas Lever, who in a sermon which was 
preached later describes the University life of his 
day. With some modifications, it may perhaps 
stand for Tyndale's experience : — 

"There are divers there which rise daily between 
four and five o'clock in the morning, and from five 



12 MEN WITH A MISSION. 

until six o'clock use common prayer, with an ex- 
hortation of God, and in a common chapel. From 
six until ten o'clock they use either private study 
or common lectures. At ten of the clock they go 
to dinner, whereat they be content with a greasy 
piece of beef amongst four, having a few pottage 
made of the broth of the same beef, with salt and 
oatmeal, and nothing else. After this slender din- 
ner, they be either teaching or learning until five of 
the clock in the evening, when they have a supper 
not much better than their dinner. Immediately 
after which they go either to reasoning in problems 
or unto some other study, until it be nine or ten of 
the clock, and then, being without fire, are fain to 
walk or run up and down half an hour, to get a 
heat in their feet, when they go to bed." 

With some few modifications, this description 
may stand for the student life of Tyndale, and 
it is certainly a picture of hard living and of 
stern training. In the year I 5 1 2 William Tyndale 
received his degree of B.A., and in 1 5 1 5 he was 
licensed M.A. For some reason which cannot very 
clearly be discovered, Tyndale afterwards left Oxford 
for Cambridge, where Erasmus was at that time lec- 
turing. 

It has been pointed out by Demaus, in his admir- 
able and exhaustive biography, that Tyndale's famous 
sentence was merely a re-echo of what Erasmus had 
said long before. In the exhortation prefixed to one 
of Lis works Erasmus w r rote : "I totally dissent from 



THE SCHOLAR. 



13 



those who are unwilling that the Sacred Scriptures, 
translated into the vulgar tongue, should be read 
by private individuals, as if Christ had taught 
such subtle doctrines that they can with diffi- 
culty be understood by a very few theologians, or 
as if the strength of the Christian religion lay in 
men's ignorance of it. The mysteries of kings it 
were perhaps better to conceal, but Christ wishes His 
mysteries to be published as widely as possible. I 
would wish even all women to read the Gospels and 
the Epistles of St. Paul. And I wish they were 
translated into all languages of all people, that they 
might be read and known, not merely by the Scotch 
and the Irish, but even by the Turks and the Saracens. 
I wish that the husbandman may sing parts of them 
at his plough, that the weaver may warble them at 
his shuttle, that the traveller may with their narra- 
tives beguile the weariness of the way." 

These are indeed noble words, and one wishes 
that Erasmus had possessed the courage of his 
convictions, but his selfishness, weakness, and love 
of ease prevented him from braving the risks that 
Luther and Tyndale incurred. He w r as like the 
courtier who advised Latimer to remain a papist 
until " it pleased God to add to Latimer's opinions 
converts in such honest number " as to make pro- 
fession of his belief safe and respectable. Tyndale 
was of other and of harder material than Erasmus, 
and therefore he obtained the success that he did. 
Withes may be useful for making baskets, but heart 



14 MEN WITH A MISSION. 

of oak and iron are required for the construction of 
warships. " In almost all plans of great enterprise," 
says John Foster, " a man must systematically dis- 
miss at the entrance every wish to stipulate with 
his destiny for his safety. He voluntarily treads 
within the precincts of danger ; and though it be 
possible he may escape, he ought to be prepared with 
the fortitude of a self-devoted victim. This is the 
inevitable condition on which . . . Eeformers must 
commence their career. Either they must allay 
their fire of enterprise, or abide the liability to be 
exploded by it from the world." Such was William 
Tyndale ; while the character of Erasmus is sketched 
in the words in which the same writer describes the 
man without decision of character : " He belongs to 
whatever can make capture of him. One thing 
after another vindicates its right to him while he is 
trying to go on, as twigs and chips floating near 
the edge of a river are intercepted by every weed 
and whirled in every little eddy." 

At Cambridge, therefore, Tyndale remained, and 
there he not only began " to smell the Word of God," 
but he also made choice of his future profession. 
During his course at the Universities, Tyndale had 
at least one pupil to whom he made reference 
in his last letter to Fryth the martyr. In the 
year 1 5 2 1 Tyndale left Cambridge and went to 
live as chaplain and tutor at the house of Sir 
John Walsh in Little Sodbury, Gloucestershire. 
The mansion of this local magnate "is charmingly 



THE SCHOLAR. 15 

situated on the south-western slope of the Cotswolds, 
and enjoys a magnificent prospect over the richly 
wooded vale of the Severn, to the distant hills of 
Wales. Though somewhat shorn of its former 
dignity, and only in part inhabited, the house is still, 
in the main, intact ; time indeed has dealt gently 
with it, and has added to the beauties of its grace- 
ful and varied architecture those mellowing touches 
which delight the eye of the lover of the pic- 
turesque." x 

Here Tyndale lived for years, and in this quiet 
seclusion he had sufficient leisure to reflect upon 
the matters which had previously engaged his atten- 
tion; it was here that he fully resolved to devote 
himself to the great enterprise with which his 
name is inseparably associated. Tor the intel- 
lectual revival that had set in all through Europe 
had reached England also ; and men no longer cared 
to waste their time in discussing such puerilities 
as Erasmus states that in the solemn disputations 
of the scholars were discussed. As, for example, 
such questions as — " Whether the Pope can com- 
mand angels ? " " Whether he be a mere man, or, 
as God, participates in both natures with Christ ? " 
" And whether he be not more merciful than Christ 
was, since we do not read that Christ ever recalled 
any from the pains of purgatory ? " 

Old Foxe who obtained his information from an 
eye-witness, who is believed by Demaus to have 

1 Demaus. 



1 6 MEN WITH A MISSION. 

been Eichard Webb, who was afterwards servant to 
Latimer, speaks thus of Tyndale's life in the old 
manor-house : " Master Tyndale being in service 
with one Master Walsh, a knight, who married a 
daughter of Sir Eobert Poyntz, a knight dwelling in 
Gloucestershire. The said Tyndale being school- 
master to the said Master Walsh's children, and 
being in good favour with his master, sat most 
commonly at his own table. Which Master Walsh 
kept a good ordinary commonly at his table, and there 
resorted unto him many times sundry abbots, deans, 
archdeacons, with divers other doctors, and great 
beneficed men ; who there, together with Master . 
Tyndale sitting at the same table, did use many 
times to enter communication, and talk of -learned 
men, as of Luther and of Erasmus ; also of divers 
other controversies and questions upon the Scripture. 
Then Master Tyndale, as he was learned and well 
practised in God's matters, so he spared not to show 
unto them simply and plainly his judgment in 
matters, as he thought ; and when they at any time 
did vary from Tyndale in opinions and judgment, he 
would show them in the book, and lay plainly before 
them the open and manifest places of the Scriptures, 
to confute their errors and confirm his sayings. 
And thus continued they for a certain season, rea- 
soning and contending together divers and sundry 
times, till at length they waxed weary, and bare a 
secret grudge in their hearts against him. 

" So upon a time," continues Foxe, " some of 



THE SCHOLAR. i 7 

these beneficed doctors bid Master Walsh and the 
lady his wife at a supper or banquet, there having 
among them talk at will without any gainsaying. 
The supper or banquet being done, and Master 
Walsh and his lady being come home, they called 
for Master Tyndale, and talked with him of such 
communication as had been where they came from 
and of their opinions. Master Tyndale thereunto 
made answer agreeable to the truth of God's Word, 
and in reproving of their false opinions. The 
Lady Walsh, being a stout woman, and as Master 
Tyndale did report her to be wise, there being no 
more but they three, Master Walsh, his wife, and 
Master Tyndale : ' Well/ said she, ' there was such 
a doctor he may dispend two hundred pound by the 
year ; another one hundred pound ; and another 
three hundred pound ; and what think ye, were it 
reason that we should believe you before them so great, 
learned, and beneficed men ? ' Master Tyndale, 
hearing her, gave her no answer ; nor after that 
had but small arguments against such, for he 
perceived it would not help, in effect to the 
contrary." 

The character of the disputes may be inferred 
from the following paragraph which has been com- 
piled by D'Aubigne from Tyndale's writings : — 

"In the dining-room of the old hall a varied 
group was assembled round the hospitable table. 
There were Sir John and Lady Walsh, a few 
gentlemen of the neighbourhood, with several 

B 



1 8 MEN WITH A MISSION. 

abbots, deans, monks, and doctors in their respec- 
tive costumes. Tyndale occupied the humblest 
place, and generally kept Erasmus' New Testament 
within reach, in order to prove what he advanced. 
Numerous domestics were moving about engaged in 
waiting on the guests ; and at length the conversa- 
tion, after wandering a little, took a more precise 
direction. The priests grew impatient when they 
saw the terrible volume appear. ' Your Scriptures 
only seem to make heretics/ they exclaimed. ' On 
the contrary/ replied Tyndale, ' the source of 
heresies is pride ; now, the Word of God strips 
man of everything, and leaves him as bare as Job/ 
1 The Word of God ! Why, even we don't under- 
stand your Word ; how can the vulgar understand 
it ? ' ' You don't understand it/ rejoined Tyndale, 
' because you look into it only for foolish questions. 
Now, the Scriptures are a clue, which we must 
follow without turning aside until we arrive at 
Christ, for Christ is the end.' 'And I tell you/ 
shouted out another priest, ' that the Scriptures are 
a Daedalian labyrinth — a conjuring-book wherein 
everybody finds what he wants.' 'Alas!' replied 
Tyndale, 'you read them without Jesus Christ; 
that's why they are an obscure book to you. What 
do I say ? A grave of briars ; if thou loose thyself 
in one place thou art caught in another.' 'No ; it 
is we who give the Scriptures, and we who explain 
them to you.' ' You set candles before images,' 
replied Tyndale ; I and since you give them light, 



THE SCHOLAR. 19 

why don't you give them food ? Why don't you 
make their bellies hollow, and put victuals and drink 
inside ? To serve God by such mummeries is treat- 
ing Him like a spoilt child, whom you pacify with 
a toy, or you make him a horse out of a stick.' " 

It is no wonder that such discussions (for this 
picture is probably a fair sample of many, that took 
place both in the hall of the manor-house, and in 
the houses of the neighbouring clergy and gentry) 
disturbed the minds of the knight and of his wife. 
As Tyndale could not reply to the argument from 
wealth, he called in the aid of Erasmus, who was then 
at the zenith of his fame. Some eleven years before, 
Erasmus had written a book entitled " The Manual 
of a Christian Soldier." This work Tyndale trans- 
lated and placed in the hands of Lady Walsh. 
The opinions of Tyndale were, of course, despicable 
because he was poor, but Erasmus was the pet of 
princes, and his words could not well be disregarded. 
Erasmus in this book had condemned the follies of 
the Church teachers of his day, and demanded, 
concerning those things which pertain to faith, 
" Why, let them be expressed in the fewest possible 
articles ; those which pertain to good living, let 
them also be expressed in few words, and so ex- 
pressed that men may understand that the yoke of 
Christ is easy and light, and not harsh ; that they 
may see that in the clergy they have found fathers 
and not tyrants ; pastors, not robbers ; that they 
are invited to salvation, and not dragged to slavery." 



20 MEN WITH A MISSION. 

" After they had read this book/' says Foxe, 
" these great prelates were no more so often called 
to the house, nor when they came had the cheer 
and countenance as they were wont to have, 
the which they did well perceive, and also that it 
was by the means and incensing of Master Tyndale, 
and at last they came no more there." 

Tyndale had converted the knight and his wife, 
but he had also made for himself some implacable 
and restless enemies. He further increased their 
hatred by preaching in the villages round about, 
and, as one tradition asserts, even in Bristol. The 
priests inflamed one another with hatred against 
him, and at length Tyndale was summoned before 
the Chancellor of the diocese to answer for his 
conduct. 

"When I came before the Chancellor, he threat- 
ened me grievously, and reviled me, and rated me 
as though I had been a dog ; and laid to my charge 
whereof there could be none accused brought forth/' 
says Tyndale himself of this trial. 

But Tyndale was not the man to desist when once 
he had learned what his duty was. He has chronicled 
the workings of his mind at this period thus : " A 
thousand books had they lever (rather) to be put forth 
against their abominable doings and doctrines than 
that the Scripture should come to light . . . which 
thing only moved me to translate the New Testa- 
ment. Because / had perceived by experience how it 
was impossible to establish the lay-people in any 



THE SCHOLAR. 21 

truth, except the Scriptures were plainly laid before 
their eyes in their mother-tongue, that they might 
see the process, order, and meaning of the text : for 
else, whatsoever truth is taught them these enemies 
of all truth quench it again." 

In his perplexity Tyndale sought for counsel and 
sympathy from " a certain doctor that dwelt not far 
off, and had been an old Chancellor before to a 
bishop. ' Do you not know/ said the ex-Chancellor, 
' that the Pope is very antichrist, whom the Scrip- 
ture speaketh of ? But beware what you say ; for 
if you shall be perceived to be of that opinion, it 
will cost you your life. I have been an officer of 
his, but I have given it up, and I defy him and all 
his works.' " 

Soon after this visit " Master Tyndale happened 
to be in the company of a learned man, and in 
communing and disputing with him, drove him to 
that issue that the learned man said, ' We had 
better be without God's laws than the Pope's.' 
Master Tyndale hearing that, answered him, ' I 
defy the Pope and all his laws ; ' and said, ' If God 
spare my life, ere many years i will cause a 
boy that driveth the plough shall know more 
of the Scripture than thou doest.' " 

These noble words were, of course, soon published 
through the district, and they intensified the hatred 
of the priests still more against him. Tyndale was 
quite willing to leave the neighbourhood, and he even 
offered to settle in any English county if they would 



22 MEN WITH A MISSION. 

but permit him to teach the children and to preach 
there. But seeing the peril to which he had ex- 
posed his friends, and perhaps still more acutely 
realising that his work could not be accomplished 
in Sodbury, Tyndale took leave of his patron, and 
came up to London. 



CHAPTER III. 

MARKING THE COURSE OF THE WORLD ; OR, 
LEARNING WHOM NOT TO TRUST. 

" In haste the fancied bliss to gain, 
In the wrong path they go, 
Unmindful that it surely leads 
To everlasting woe. 

Thus for the world's delusive charms 

They barter joys sublime, 
And forfeit an immortal crown 

For the frail wreaths of time." 

"A man may be in as just possession of truth as of a city 5 and 
yet be forced to surrender." — Religio Medico. 

"There's a strange mixture of wisdom and folly, of grace and 
impatience, of the sublime and the ridiculous, in most of the best 
men." — David Davies. 



NO EOOM FOR A BIBLE IN THE BISHOP'S PALACE— THE MER- 
CHANT'S HOUSE A HOME— MONMOUTH'S GRACIOUS CHAR- 
ACTER—AN EXILE FOR CONSCIENCE' SAKE. 

Tyndale came to London (probably about 1523) 
provided with a letter of introduction to Sir Harry 
Guildford, the Controller of the Eoyal Household, 
and a great favourite with the King. This, Tyndale 
trusted, would also secure for him a favourable 
23 



24 MEN WITH A MISSION. 

reception from Tunstal,the Bishop of London, who was 
a friend of Erasmus and a patron of the new learning. 

At the time of Tyndale's arrival in the metro- 
polis, London was deeply agitated about Wolsey's 
tyranny ; for the Cardinal had demanded from Par- 
liament a subsidy that amounted to a tax of four 
shillings in the pound upon all property in England. 
When this was refused, as an utter impossibility, 
Wolsey dismissed the Parliament. This summary 
proceeding excited great indignation against the 
Cardinal, whose extravagance, pride, and tyranny 
were in every mouth. Moreover, the books of 
Luther were secretly in circulation among the 
people, and probably Tyndale saw at least some of 
them. He was himself unconscious of the steps 
by which he was being led to where alone he could 
effectually accomplish his life-work of translating 
the Scriptures. Now Tyndale presented his letter 
of introduction to Sir Harry Guildford, and freely 
stated his purpose of rendering the Scriptures into 
English. As a proof of his ability to perform this 
task, Tyndale submitted a translation of Isocrates. 
" I should be pleased to become chaplain to the 
Bishop of London ; will you beg him to accept this 
trifle ? Isocrates ought to be an excellent recom- 
mendation to a scholar ; will you please to add 
yours ? " 

" Sir Harry Guildford," says Tyndale, " willed me 
to write an epistle to my lord, and go to him 
myself ; which I also did, and delivered my epistle 



MARKING THE COURSE OF THE WORLD. 25 

to a servant of his own, one William Hebilthwayte, 
a man of mine own acquaintance. . . . But God 
(which knoweth what is within hypocrites) saw that 
I was beguiled, and that that counsel was not the 
next way to my purpose. And therefore he gat 
me no favour in my lord's sight, whereupon my 
lord answered me, his house was full, and advised 
me to seek in London, where he said I could not 
lack a service. And so in London I abode almost 
a year, and marked the course of the world, and 
heard our praters (I would say preachers) how they 
boasted themselves and their high authority; and 
beheld the pomps of our prelates, and how busy 
they were, as they yet are, to set peace and unity 
in the world, and saw things whereof I defer to 
speak at this time, and understood at the last not 
only that there was no room in my lord of London's 
palace to translate the New Testament, but also that 
there was no place to do it in all England, as ex- 
perience doth now openly declare." 

Thus were Tyndale's hopes of patronage from the 
Bishop of London utterly disappointed. But God 
had not deserted him, and He had already provided 
a benefactor for His servant. Humphrey Monmouth, 
a wealthy merchant of London, who resided in 
Barking (which was at that time considered to be 
the extreme east end of London), happened to be 
in St. Dunstan's in the West when Tyndale preached 
there. Moved by one of those inexplicable im- 
pulses which are really the influence of God's Spirit, 



26 MEN WITH A MISSION, 

Monmouth invited Tyndale to his house, and there 
he remained for six months. His host thus speaks 
of the guest whose character he thus had ample 
opportunity of studying : " He lived like a good 
priest, as me thought. He studied most part of 
the day and of the night at his book, and he would 
eat but sodden meat by his good will, nor drink 
but small single beer. I never saw him wear linen 
about him in the space he was with me. I did 
promise him ten pounds sterling to pray for my 
father and mother, their souls, and all Christian 
souls ; I did pay it to him when he made his ex- 
change at Hamboro\ Afterwards he got of some 
other men ten pounds sterling more, the which he 
left with me/' 

Sir Thomas More, although a bitter enemy to 
Tyndale, confessed that " before he went over the 
sea, he was well known for a man of right good 
living, studious, and well learned in Scripture, and 
looked and preached holily." 

Of Sir Humphrey Monmouth, Latimer relates an 
anecdote that cannot, though familiar, be well omitted 
here. When preaching before King Edward, Latimer 
said that a friend of his "knew in London a great 
rich merchant, which merchant had a very poor 
neighbour ; yet, for all his poverty, he loved him 
very well, and lent him money at his need, and let 
him to come to his table whensoever he would. It 
was even at that time when Doctor Colet was in 
trouble, and should have been burnt, if God had not 



MARKING THE COURSE OF THE WORLD. 27 

turned the King's heart to the contrary. Now the 
rich man began to be a Scripture man ; he began to 
smell the Gospel : the poor man was a papist still. 
It chanced on a time, when the rich man talked of 
the Gospel, sitting at his table, where he reproved 
popery and such kind of things, the poor man, being 
then present, took a great displeasure against the 
rich man ; insomuch that he would come no more 
to his house, he would borrow no money of him, 
as he was wont to do bef ore-times ; yea, and con- 
ceived such hatred and malice against him, that he 
went and accused him before the Bishops. Now, 
the rich man, not knowing any such displeasure, 
offered many times to talk with him, and to set him 
at quiet ; but it would not be : the poor man had 
such a stomach, that he would not vouchsafe to 
speak with him ; if he met the rich man in the 
street, he would go out of his way. One time it 
happened that he met him so in a narrow street, 
that he could not avoid but come near him ; yet for 
all that, this poor man had such a stomach against 
the rich man, I say, that he was minded to go for- 
ward, and not to speak with him. The rich man 
perceiving that, catcheth him by the hand, and 
asked him, saying, ' Neighbour, what is come into 
your heart, to take such displeasure with me ? 
What have I done against you ? Tell me, and I 
will be ready at all times to make you amends. 5 
Finally, he spake so gently, so charitably, so lov- 
ingly and friendly, that it wrought so in the poor 



28 MEN WITH A MISSION, 

man's heart, that by-and-by he fell down upon his 
knees and asked him forgiveness. The rich man 
forgave him, and so took him again to his favour ; 
and they loved as well as ever they did afore. Many 
one would have said, ' Set him in the stocks ; let 
him have bread of affliction and water of tribulation/ 
But this man did not so. And here you see an 
ensample of the practice of God's words in such 
sort, that the poor man, bearing great hatred and 
malice against the rich man, was brought, through 
the lenity and meekness of the rich man, from his 
error and wickedness to the knowledge of God's 
Word. I would you would consider this ensample 
well, and follow it." 

This tender-hearted man was also a great- patron 
of men of letters, and probably it was at his table 
that Tyndale was advised by some unknown friend 
to go abroad. Upon the Continent he might reason- 
ably hope to complete his translation, and to print 
it without molestation. , Without knowing that he 
thereby doomed himself to exile which would only 
terminate in his martyrdom, and yet not shrinking 
from the ordeal, Tyndale left England in the month 
of May 1524, and sailed thence to Hamburg. No 
one observed with interest the austere, nervous man 
as he gazed for the last time upon his native land, 
but his voyage was of far more importance to Eng- 
land, and to the world, than any event of the 
period. Europe watched with mingled feelings 
Luther's heroic stand, and the German Eeformer 



MARKING THE COURSE OF THE WORLD. 29 

was never at any time of his life without many 
friends who stood steadily beside him in his time 
of peril. With the exception of Monmouth, who 
only with much difficulty saved himself from death, 
Tyndale had no sympathy or helper at all ; but, 
without complaining of this isolation, he went for- 
ward with true national persistence in the path of 
duty. He himself and his work were of such a 
character that they could not be adequately ap- 
preciated then, but long after Wolsey and his hat 
(to which the nobility bowed, and before which 
candles were burned) are forgotten, the work of 
Tyndale will be appreciated, and will exert a 
powerful influence in the lives of millions through 
the eternity that is yet to come. 



CHAPTER IV. 

AN EXILE, YET IN HIS FATHER'S LAND. 

" The Scriptures have a might and magnificence all their own ; 
How comforting are its promises, how precious are its precepts ! 
How wise and kind and pure and good its influence on the 

soul ! 
How strong its hold upon the heart, its power within the mind ! " 

— Tupper. 

" Stars are poor books, and oftentimes do miss ; 
This book of stars lights to eternal bliss." 

" To recollect a promise of the Bible, this is substance ! Nothing 
will do but the Bible. If I read authors and hear different opinions, 
I cannot say, l This is truth ! ' I cannot grasp it as substance ; but 
the Bible gives me something to hold." — Richard Cecil. 



HELPED BY LUTHEK— FINDING A COMPANION— A BOLD 
VENTURE— DRIVEN AWAY— BURNING THE BIBLE DOES 
NOT DESTROY IT. 

Hamburg, as a centre of commercial activity, afforded 
a singularly good hiding-place for Tyndale, and it 
was also a most suitable port from whence he could 
send the Bible when printed into England. It is 
indeed, doubtful as to what his movements were ; 
he may have remained for a year in Hamburg, or, as 
some have supposed, Tyndale may have left it upon a 
30. 



AN EXILE, YET IN HIS FATHER'S LAND. 31 

visit elsewhere. Monmouth says that after Tyndale 
left England, " within a year he sent for his ten 
pounds to me from Hamburg, and thither I sent it 
to him." Eoxe supplements this information by the 
statement that, " on his first departing out of the 
realm, Tyndale took his journey into the further 
parts of Germany, as into Saxony, where he had 
conference with Luther and other learned men." 
And Tyndale' s great enemy, Sir Thomas More, said 
that " Tyndale, as soon as he got him hence from 
England, got him to Luther straight ; " and adds 
" that at the time of his translation of the New 
Testament, Tyndale was with Luther at Wittemberg, 
and the confederacy between him and Luther was 
well known." It seems, therefore, probable that 
almost immediately after his landing at Ham- 
burg, Tyndale made his way to Wittemberg. His 
admiration of Luther would be a quite sufficient in- 
ducement to lead him to take this step, and perhaps 
also his sense of loneliness and desolation in- 
fluenced him. Upon the exile himself the effect of 
the visit must have been most beneficial. Demaus 
says : " Eor Tyndale thus to come into contact 
with the strong, joyous faith of Luther, to hear his 
lion voice echoing through the crowded University 
Church of Wittemberg, or to listen to his wonderful 
table-talk as he sipped his beer in friendly social 
intercourse, would be to have his whole soul inspired 
with courage, bravely to do whatever duty God had 
called him to, and to learn to repose with implicit 



32 MEN WITH A MISSION. 

confidence in the protection of the Divine Master 
whom he served." 

Here, in Wittemberg, Tyndale, it would seem, 
obtained a companion, one William Boy e, who, how- 
ever, proved to be a fickle, irrepressible bore, a man 
who must have inflicted acute torture upon his com- 
panion. But his help was a necessity if the Bible 
were to be speedily translated, and Tyndale had no 
choice whatever ; it must be either Boye or no tran- 
slation ; and Tyndale suppressed all personal feeling 
in the matter. Boye's part in the translation w T as, 
of course, quite mechanical and subordinate, but 
in the laborious physical work of transcribing Boye 
was helpful to Tyndale. 

" Imagination," says Dr. Stoughton of the after- 
life of the two at Cologne, "can picture the two 
men, influenced by far different motives, at w T ork in 
the far-famed city on the banks of the Bhine, in 
some poor- looking house in an obscure street, while 
a priest or a pilgrim passed under the windows on 
their way to the shrine of the Three Kings, little 
dreaming of the kind of employment going on there, 
and of the consequences to which it would lead." 

In the spring of 1525 Tyndale went to Hamburg, 
as we have seen, in order to obtain the money that 
had been sent to him from London. From Ham- 
burg, Tyndale, accompanied by Boye, went to 
Cologne, and now the New Testament which had 
been translated was put into the press. Tyndale 
was prepared to venture upon an edition of six 



AN EXILE, YET IN HIS FATHER'S LAND. 33 

thousand copies, but the printers were only willing 
to undertake half that number. The book was to 
be an octavo, and for a time the enterprise pro- 
spered and all went well. But a busybody, one 
John Cochlseus, who was at that time in Cologne, 
by some means or another obtained a hint as to 
the possible peril. He relates the incident with 
intense self-complacency, as if it were something 
to boast of. He says : — 

" Having become intimate and familiar with the 
Cologne printers, he (Cochlaeus) sometimes heard them 
confidently boast, when in their cups, that, whether 
the King and Cardinal of England would or not, all 
England would in a short time be Lutheran. He 
heard, also, that there were two Englishmen lurking 
there, skilful in languages, and fluent, whom, how- 
ever, he never could see or converse with. Calling, 
therefore, certain printers into his lodging, after they 
were heated with wine, one of them, in more private 
discourse, discovered to him the secret by which 
England was to be drawn over to the side of Luther, 
namely, that three thousand copies of the Lutheran 
New Testament, translated into the English lan- 
guage, were in-the press, and already were advanced 
as far as the letter K, in ordine quarternionem ; that 
the expenses were wholly supplied by English mer- 
chants, who were secretly to convey the work, when 
printed, and to disperse it widely through all Eng- 
land, before the King or the Cardinal could discover 
or prohibit it. 

c 



34 MEN WITH A MISSION, 

" Cochlaeus being inwardly affected by fear and 
wonder, disguised his grief, under the appearance of 
admiration. But another day considering with him- 
self the magnitude of the grievous danger, he cast 
in mind by what method he might expeditiously 
obstruct these very wicked attempts. He went, 
therefore, secretly, to Herman Einck, a patrician of 
Cologne, and military knight, familiar both with the . 
Emperor and the King of England, and a Councillor, 
and disclosed to him the whole affair, as, by means 
of the wine, he had received it. He, that he might 
ascertain all things more certainly, sent another 
person into the house where the work was printing, 
according to the discovery of Cochlaeus, and when 
he had understood from him that the matter was 
even so, and that there was great abundance of 
paper there, he went to the senate, and so brought 
it about that the printer was interdicted from pro- 
ceeding further in that work. The two English 
apostates, snatching away with them the quarto 
sheets printed, fled by ship going up the Ehine to 
Worms, where the people were under the full rage 
of Lutheranism, that there, by another printer, they 
might complete the work begun." 

Eoye found a relief for his vexation in abusing 
Cochlaeus, whom he calls — 

* ' A little, praty, foolish poade, 

But although his stature be small, 
Yet men say he lacketh no gall, 
More venomous than any toad." 

Tyndale probably felt this hindrance to his work 



AN EXILE, YET IN HIS FATHER'S LAND. 35 

far more keenly than [Roy! did, but 'tie 4^ Jot the 
man to descend to abmse. Actfe pt&Lably closfed his 
lips with a firmer res(Mv|tp|igf ^f^|NtuHflft^/ere in 

spite of all obstacles, and LU LllUti avenge himself upon 
his adversaries. At Worms it would appear that 
Tyndale laid aside the quarto edition which had been 
so rudely interrupted, and that he there began to print 
an octavo edition of the New Testament. About the 
spring of 1526 the Testaments were not only ready, 
but they were in England, and they began at once 
to be circulated. They there commanded a wholesale 
price, of thirteenpence per copy, and were retailed 
at about thirtypence per volume. Of course, it 
must be remembered that the present value of 
money is fifteen times more than it was at the 
period under consideration. 

Not only had Cochlseus warned Henry and 
Wolsey of the intended act of atrocity, but Lee, 
who was King Henry's almoner, also wrote to 
England to say what he had heard of Tyndale's 
doings. He urged the King to persecute these 
criminals to the utmost, and thus to preserve his 
kingdom from danger. Henry required but little 
persuasion to become a persecutor, but the Bishops 
were determined to make his obedience quite sure. 
The Bishop of St. Asaph laid the matter before 
Wolsey, and he called a council of prelates to 
advise as to what was to be done about these 
dreadful books. Eoye thus represents the discus- 
sion in a jingling poem that he published : — 

Two priests' servants, named Watkyn and Jef- 



36 MEN WITH A MISSION. 

fraye, are supposed to be conversing about the 
Testaments, and they discourse thus : — 

11 Jef. But nowe of Standisshe accusacion 
Brefly to make declaracion, 

Thus to the Cardinall he spake : 
1 Pleaseth youre honourable Grace, 
Here is chaunsed a pitious cace, 

And to the Churehe a grett lacke. 
The Gospell in oure Englisshe tonge, 
Of laye men to he red and sewage, 

Is nowe bidder come to remayne. 
"Which many heretykes shall make, 
Except youre Grace some wave take 

By youre authorite hym to restrayne.' 

Wat, But what sayde the Cardinall here at ? 
Jef. He spake the wordes of Pilat, 

Sayinge, ' I fynde no fault therin. ? 
Howe he it, the bisshops assembled, 
Amonge theym he examened, 
What was best to determyn ? 
Then answered hisshop Cayphas, 
That a grett parte better it was 
The Gospell to be condemned ; 
Lest their vices manyfolde 
Shulde be knowen of yonge and olde, 

Their estate to be contempned. 
The Cardinall then incontinent 
Agaynst the Gospell gave judgement, 

Saying to brenne he deserved. 
Wherto all the bisshoppis cryed, 
Answerynge, ' It cannot be denyed 
He is worthy so to be served.' 

Jpf. Tliey sett nott by the Gospell a five : 
Diddest thou nott beare whatt villany 
They did vnto the Gospell? 
Wat. Why, did they agaynst hym conspyre? 



AN EXILE, YET IN HIS FATHER'S LAND. 37 

Jef. By my trothe they sett hym a fyre 

Openly in London cite. 
Wat. Who caused it so to be done ? 
Jef In sothe the Bisshoppe of London, 
With the Cardinallis authorite : 
Which at Paulis crosse ernestly 
Denounced it to he heresy 

That the Gospell sliuld come to lyght ; 
Callynge them heretikes execrable 
Whiche caused the Gospell venerable 

To come vnto lave mens syght. 
He declared there in his furiousnes, 
That he fownde erroures more and les 

Above thre thousande in the translacion. 
Howe be it when all cam to pas, 
I dare save vnable he was 

Of one erroure to make probacion." 

Tunstal preached at St. Paul's Cross at this burn- 
ing of the Testament, and yet the people read the 
book, which continued to be circulated in spite of 
the priests. Tunstal thereupon further issued an 
injunction in which he ordered all copies of the 
Testament to be surrendered to him on pain of 
excommunication. But although the Archbishop of 
Canterbury also issued a similar mandate, the books 
continued to be sold and to be read, although in 
secret. Nay more, the printers of Antwerp, encour- 
aged by the enormous demand for Testaments that 
had arisen, afterwards printed a large supply upon 
their own account, and, further, succeeded in smug- 
gling them into England. In sublime ignorance of 
the law of supply and demand, the Bishops then 
resolved to purchase these Testaments in order to 
destroy them. The aged Archbishop of Canterbury 



3% MEN WITH A MISSION. 

expended a sum amounting to nearly ;£iooo, at the 
present value of money, for this purpose, but Tunstal 
is the chief hero of the incident. Old Hall, the 
chronicler, relates the event, which, though it occurred 
later, may be most conveniently referred to here :— 
" It happened that one Packington, a merchant 
and mercer of London, was in Antwerp, and this 
Packington was a man that highly favoured Tyndale, 
but to the Bishop utterly showed himself to the 
contrary. The Bishop commenced of the New Tes- 
taments, and how he would gladly buy them. 
Packington said to the Bishop, ' My lord, I know 
the Dutchmen and strangers that have bought them 
of Tyndale and have them here to sell ; so that if it 
be your lordship's pleasure to pay for them I will 
then assure you to have every book of them that is 
printed and here unsold.' The Bishop said, f Do 
your diligence and get them ; and with all my heart I 
will pay for them whatsoever they cost you.' Pack- 
ington came to Tyndale and said, f William, I know 
thou art a poor man, and hast a heap of New Tes- 
taments by thee for the which thou hast both 
endangered thy friends and beggared thyself, and I 
have now gotten thee a merchant, which with ready 
money shall despatch thee of all that thou hast/ 
' Who is the merchant ? ' said Tyndale. ' The 
Bishop of London.' ' Oh, that is because he will 
burn them,' said Tyndale. 'Yea, marry,' quoth 
Packington. 'I am the gladder,' said Tyndale, 'for 
these two benefits shall come thereof ; I shall get 



AN EXILE, YET IN HIS FATHER'S LAND. 39 

the money to bring myself out of debt, and the 
whole world will cry out against the burning of 
God's Word ; and the overplus of the money that 
shall remain to me shall make me more studious to 
correct the said New Testament, and so newly print 
the same once again, and I trust the second will 
much better like you than ever the first.' And 
so, forward went the bargain: the Bishop had the 
books, Packington had the thanks, and Tyndale had 
the money." 

On 4th May 1530, therefore, at St. Paul's Cross, 
in the Churchyard, these Testaments were publicly 
burned. Burnet says : " This burning had such a 
baleful appearance in it, being generally called a 
burning of the Word of God, that people from thence 
concluded there must be a visible contrariety between 
that book and the doctrines of those who kindled it, 
by which both their prejudice against the clergy and 
their desire of reading the New Testament were in- 
creased." Men said to one another that the book 
;c was not only faultless, but very well translated, and 
was devised to be burnt because men should not be 
able to prove such faults as were at Paul's Cross 
declared to have been found in it were never found 
there indeed, but untruly surmised." 

Commenting in after-years upon the carping criti- 
cisms that were passed on his work, Tyndale said : 
" There is not so much as one i therein if it lack a 
tittle over his head, but they have noted it, and 
number it unto the ignorant people for an heresy." 



CHAPTER V. 

A MAN WITHOUT A PATTERN, BUT WITH 
MANY IMITATORS. 

" This Book, this Holy Book ? in every line 
Marked with the seal of high Divinity, 
On every leaf bedewed with drops of love 
Divine and with the eternal heraldry 
And signature of God Almighty stamped 
From first to last ; this ray of sacred light, - 
This lamp from off the everlasting throne, 
Mercy took down, and in the night of time 
Stood casting in the dark her gracious bow, 
And ever more beseeching men with tears 
And earnest sighs to read, believe, and live." 

— Pollock. 



CUKIOSITIES OF TRANSLATION — ANCIENT VERSIONS — THE 
BOOK THAT TURNS THE HEART INSIDE OUT — TYNDALE'S 
QUALIFICATIONS— HIS PUNGENT GLOSSES. 

A few pages may perhaps be devoted to those who 

had preceded Tyndale in the work of translation, 

but for all practical purposes, as it will be seen, they 

were of no aid to the work of Tyndale. 

As an example of the errors of translators a few 

specimens may be subjoined, without any attempt at 
4 o 



A MAN WITHOUT A PATTERN. 41 

preserving the order of time. Although of a later 
date, they indicate the difficulties that beset the 
work and the dangers into which the unwary were 
liable to fall. 

Among singular editions of the Scriptures there 
is one that was printed in London in 1551, and 
which is called the Bug Bible because Ps. xci. 5 is 
printed, " Thou shalt not be afraid of the bugges by 
night." 

In 1 5 6 1 an edition of the Bible was printed at 
Geneva ; it is called the Breeches Bible because of 
its translating Gen. ii. 7 thus : " They sewed fig- 
leaves together and made themselves breeches." But 
this was also done by an edition printed in 1 568, in 
which also Jer. viii. 22 is rendered, " Is there no 
treacle in Gilead ? " This word treacle was after- 
wards altered into rosin, and in 161 1 rosin gave 
place to balm. 

In one edition of the Bible which was printed in 
1 7 1 7, the first line of Luke xx. is misprinted into 
" The parable of the vinegar " instead of " The 
parable of the vineyard." 

It is evident that God left much to the learning 
and common-sense of the men who translated the 
Scriptures, and yet He has so overruled things, that, 
upon the whole, no serious mistake has long con- 
tinued in the Book of Truth. Yet, as an instance 
of the need of care, we are told that Eliot, the 
apostle of the Indians, when translating the Scrip- 
tures required the Indian word for lattice in Judges 



42 MEN WITH A MISSION. 

v. 28. He crossed his fingers to represent a lattice 
and asked one and another what word that meant. 
They told him, and he put it into his Bible. But 
when he acquired more of the language he found 
that he had actually said, " The mother of Sisera 
looked out of a window and cried through the eel 
pots." Now, as language constantly changes, there 
thence arises a need for a continuous revision of the 
translation. In our English tongue, for example, 
all-to once meant altogether or entirely ; anon meant 
immediately; bravery meant finery and not courage; 
carriage stood for baggage or that which could be 

o coo 

carried by the hand. As men constantly change 
their speech, it is evident that we must vary the 
translation, if it is to be the living voice of God to 
men. 

The Scriptures probably reached England with the 
Ptoman army, and they probably penetrated thence 
into Scotland. Of course, they were in Latin. The 
earliest attempt to render this Latin Bible into 
Saxon was that of Caedmon, a monk of Whitby, who 
lived about the seventh century. His work was 
indeed more of a paraphrase than anything else. 
The same may be said of what are called Alfred's 
Dooms, which were a free translation of the Ten 
Commandments by that King. 

In the British Museum there is the celebrated 
Durham Book. It is most beautifully written, and 
is also ornamented by curious portraits of the evan- 
gelists and others. Among other stories that are 



A MAN WITHOUT A PATTERN. 43 

related of this book, it is said that the monks of 
Lindisfarne were once flying from the Danes ; their 
ship was upset and the Durham Book fell into the 
sea. But through the merits of the patron saint, 
the tide ebbed out much farther than usual, and the 
book was found three miles from the shore, lying 
upon the sands, but unhurt by the waves ! It was 
thereupon placed in the inner lid of St. Cuthbert's 
coffin, where it was afterwards found when, in 1 104, 
the monks settled at Durham and built the Cathe- 
dral. This book is a Latin text, beneath which 
two hundred years later an interesting Anglo-Saxon 
translation was added. 

Of translations proper the earliest we know of is 
that of the Venerable Bede, who died in 735. He 
was a monk of Jarrow, on the banks of the Tyne, 
and there his shattered high-backed chair is still 
preserved. 

He is said to have been one of the most learned 
men of his time ; to which fact we may attribute 
the legend that once while he was preaching the 
stones cried out, " Amen, Venerable Bede ! " 

An eye-witness has left us an account of his 
closing days. The scribe was writing the transla- 
tion from the dictation of the dying man, when, as 
he finished the last verse of the twentieth chapter, 
he exclaimed, " There remains now only one chap- 
ter ; but it seems difficult for you to speak." "It 
is easy/' said Bede ; " take your pen, dip it in ink, 
and write as fast as you can." And he did so as 



44 MEN WITH A MISSION. 

rapidly as might be, for life was ebbing fast from 
the venerable teacher. "Now, master, now, only 
one sentence is wanting." Bede repeated it. " It 
is finished," said the writer, laying aside his goose- 
quill. " It is finished," said Bede. " Lift up my 
head ; let me sit in my cell, in the place where I 
have been accustomed to pray ; and now glory be 
to the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost." 
And so he passed away ! His work was done ; 
other men could copy his translation, and the Book 
that never dies could tell the sweet story of old to 
men who were then unborn ! 

One is reminded of Moffat's story after that he 
had rendered the Word of God into the Sechwana 
tongue. When the heathen beheld the converts 
reading the new book, they inquired " if their friends 
talked to the book." " No," was the answer ; " it 
talks to us ; for it is the Word of God." " What, 
then," was the astonished question, " does it speak ? " 
" Yes," said the Christian, " it speaks to the heart." 
It indeed became a proverb among this African 
people that the Bible turned their hearts inside out ! 
This is its privilege and function ; it speaks to the 
heart, and it turns the heart inside out ! 

The Ee formers were accustomed to point to the 
Anglo-Saxon versions as an argument against the 
Church of Borne, who then permitted what she 
afterwards forbade ! 

Sir Frederick Madden says, though, of several 
MSS. of Anglo-Saxon Gospels that are still in exist- 



A MAN WITHOUT A PATTERN. 45 

ence, "None appear to give the version in its 
original purity." 

"It is very remarkable" says Dr Stoughton, 
"that the Psalms have in all ages drawn towards 
them the affections of devout minds, and have been 
a true cardiphonia to mankind in general, so that in 
this fact we have a satisfactory answer to objections 
brought against them in modern times." It is no 
wonder, therefore, that more attention was paid to 
them than to other parts of the Sacred Book, just 
as a correct instinct leads men now to bind up the 
Psalms with the Gospels. 

We pass now to John Wycliffe, the morning 
star of the Eeformation. It is indeed difficult to 
estimate the magnitude of his wonderful work. All 
men could see the evil of Eomanism, but he alone 
saw the true remedy, and that was the Book of 
God in the speech of the people ! 

He was born about 1320, in Yorkshire, and died 
at Lutterw T orth in 1384. The carved oak pulpit in 
which he preached, the plain oak table upon which 
he wrote, the rude oak chair in which he sat, the 
robe he used to wear, are all preserved in the little 
town of Lutterworth, in the church of St. Mary, on 
the bank of the river Swift. Of this church he had 
been appointed rector by King Edward, as a reward 
for his services as ambassador when he met the repre- 
sentative of the Pope at Bruges. This was in 1374. 

" One loves to picture this remarkable man pur- 
suing his Biblical toils, now in his Lutterworth 



46 MEN WITH A MISSION. 

rectory, then in his college at Oxford, working in the 
winter nights by his lamp, and early in the summers 
morn as the sun beamed through his window. We 
see him with his long grey beard sometimes alone 
bending over the parchment manuscript, carefully 
writing down some well-laboured rendering ; and 
sometimes in company with others who sympathised 
in his sentiments and loved to aid him in his hal- 
lowed enterprise." * 

He is supposed to have commenced his work 
about 1378, and to have finished it about 1380, 
though the latter date is by some assigned to the 
New Testament alone. He began with a translation 
of the Book of Eevelation ; then came the Gospels 
in English with a commentary, and the other" sacred 
books followed at unknown periods. This trans- 
lation was from the Latin Vulgate by Jerome. It 
was multiplied and widely read by the people ; 
preachers went up and down the country explaining 
it to the crowds who attended them; it seemed, 
indeed, as if the Eeformation were to come in the 
fourteenth century instead of two hundred years 
later. But, just as in spring we often see a frost nip 
off the plentiful blossoms, so persecution put back 
the fair promise of fruit for a long time. 

An attempt was made to destroy these transla- 
tions of the Scripture, and yet, in spite of the many 
which were then destroyed, nearly 170 MSS. of 
this period remain to us. 

* History of the Bible. 



A MAN WITHOUT A PATTERN. 47 

After escaping the malice of his enemies, Wycliffe 
died at home. " Admirable/' says Fuller, " that a 
hare so often hunted with so many packs of dogs 
should die at last quietly sitting upon his form. 5 ' 
The Council of Constance, in the next century, 
after burning Wycliffe's disciple Huss, ordered that 
Wycliffe's bones should be disinterred and burned, 
and with contemptible spite they further decreed 
that the ashes were to be thrown into the river 
Swift. " Thus," says Fuller, " this brook hath con- 
veyed his ashes into Avon, Avon into Severn, Severn 
into, the narrow seas, they into the main ocean. 
And thus the ashes of Wycliffe are the emblems 
of his doctrine, which now is dispersed all the 
world over." John Purvey or Purnay, who had 
lived with Wycliffe, revised his master's work. It 
was Purvey who first termed the Sacred Book by 
its now familiar name of Bible. 

This version had even a wider circulation than 
the first, and from its influence arose the Lollard 
movement. This was both a religious and a political 
revolution ; it was an attempt to obtain reform both 
in the Church and in the State. It was a move- 
ment of all ranks, even among monks and nuns— 
alas ! without success. 

In 1408 a Convocation at Oxford enacted a law 
which forbade a translation of Scriptures into Eng- 
lish, and warned all persons against reading such 
books under penalty of excommunication. 

At this time a New Testament was worth 



48 MEN WITH A MISSION. 

£2^ 16s. 8d., or about ^45, 6s. 8d. of our money! 
At this period we are told that a decent, respectable 
man could live well upon £$ per year. Writing w r as 
tedious, slow, liable to error, and expensive, so that the 
number of copies were limited ; but about 1440 A.D., 
or sixty years after Wycliffe, the printing-press was 
invented. One of the first books that were printed 
was a Latin Bible ; one of this edition was sold 
some years ago for ^3400 ; another realised ^2000. 

In 1477 William Caxton brought this new art 
to England, and in Westminster Abbey he printed 
Taooks under the protection of King Edward IV. 

We have thus sketched briefly the history of the 
previous versions, and have come in the order of 
time to Tyndale's version of the Testament which 
Tyndale translated under so many difficulties. 
F. W. Faber (a Eomanist) says: — "Who will say 
that the uncommon beauty and marvellous English 
of the Protestant Bible is not one of the strongholds 
of heresy in this country ? It lives on the ear like 
music that can never be forgotten, like the sound of 
church bells, which the convert hardly knows how he 
can forego. Its felicities often seem to be almost 
things rather than mere words. It is part of the 
national mind, and the anchor of national seriousness. 
Nay, it is worshipped with a positive idolatry, in ex- 
tenuation of whose gross fanaticism its intrinsic beauty 
pleads availingly with the man of letters and the 
scholar. The memory of the dead passes into it. The 
potent traditions of childhood are stereotyped in its 



A MAN WITHOUT A PATTERN. 49 

phrases. The power of all the griefs and trials of a 
man is hidden beneath its words. It is the represen- 
tative of his best moments; and all that there has been 
about him of soft, and gentle, and pure, and peni- 
tent, and good, speaks to him for ever out of his 
English Bible. It is his sacred thing, which doubt 
has never dimmed and controversy never soiled. 
It has been to him all along as the silent, but oh 
how intelligible! voice of his guardian angel; and 
in the length and breadth of the land there is not a 
Protestant with one spark of religiousness about him 
whose spiritual biography is not in his Saxon Bible." 
To w T hich may be added the testimony of the 
present Bishop of Durham, who speaks of Tyndale's 
work thus: "In rendering the sacred text, he 
remained throughout faithful to the instincts of a 
scholar. From first to last his style and his inter- 
pretation are his own ; and in the originality of 
Tvndale is included in a large measure the origina- 
lity of our English Version. Eor not only did Tyndale 
contribute to it directly the substantial basis of half 
the Old Testament (in all probability) and of the 
whole of the New, but he established a standard of 
Biblical translation which others followed. It is 
even of less moment that by far the greater part of 
his translation remains intact in our present Bibles, 
than that his spirit animates the whole. He toiled 
faithfully himself, and where he failed he left to 
those who should come after the secret of success. 
. . . His influence decided that our Bible should 

D 



50 MEN WITH A MISSION. 

be popular, and not literary, speaking in a simple 
dialect, and that so, by its simplicity, it should be 
endowed with permanence." 

Mr. Fronde's testimony may perhaps be added 
here, not because it is requisite, but as the historian's 
tribute to a noble man : " Of the translation itself, 
though since that time it has been many times 
revised and altered, we may say that it is substan- 
tially the Bible with which we are all familiar. The 
peculiar genius — if such a word may be permitted— 
which breathes through it, the mingled tenderness 
and majesty, the Saxon simplicity, the preterna- 
tural grandeur, unequalled, unapproached in the 
attempted improvements of modern scholars, all are 
here, and bear the impress of the mind of one man 
—William Tyndale." 

As an example of this identity we take a 
passage from Tyndale's version ; the words in italics 
remain as Tyndale placed them in both the Author- 
ised and Eevised Versions. The passage that we 
select is Matt, xviii. 19-27 : — 

''Again I say unto you, that if two of you shall 
agree in earth in any manner thing whatsoever they 
shall desire, it shall he given them of my Father tvhich 
is in heaven. For where two or three are gathered toge- 
ther in my name, there am I in the midst of them. 

" Then came Peter to him, and said, Master, how 
oft shall my brother trespass against me and I shall 
forgive him ? shall I forgive him seven times ? Jesus 
said unto him, I say not unto thee seven times, hut 



A MAN WITHOUT A PATTERN. 51 

seventy times seven times. Therefore is the Kingdom 
of Heaven likened unto a certain King which would 
take account of his servants. And when he had 
begun to reckon, one was brought unto him which 
owed him ten thousand talents: but when he had 
nought to pay, the lord commanded him to be sold, 
and his wife and his children and all that he had, 
and payment to be made. The servant fell down and 
besought him saying, Sir, give me respite, and I will 
pay it every whit. Then had the Lord pity on the 
servant and loosed him and forgave him the debt'" 

It has been estimated that there are not more 
than 350 words in the whole book that are strange 
to us now, so that Tyndale may be justly regarded 
as one of the builders of our language. 

Of the quarto testaments which were completed 
at Worms, after the hurried flight from Cologne, 
only one fragment remains, and that is deposited 
in the British Museum. It consists of thirty-one 
leaves only, and terminates at the 12 th verse of the 
22nd chapter of St. Matthew. It was discovered 
in the year 1836 by a London bookseller bound up 
with a tract by iEcolampadius. This fragment is 
all that remains of the three thousand copies in 
quarto that were commenced at Cologne and com- 
pleted at Worms. 

Of the three thousand octavo Testaments which, 
although commenced at Worms, were issued pro- 
bably before the quarto, one perfect copy is preserved 
in the library of the Baptist College in Bristol. 



52 MEN WITH A MISSION. 

This book was purchased for the Earl of Oxford 
about the year 1740, and he rewarded the agent 
who discovered the treasure with a donation of ten 
pounds, and an annuity of twenty pounds per year. 
This latter annuity was paid for fourteen years, so that 
the total cost of the book to the Earl was ^290. 
At the death of the Earl of Oxford, his library was 
purchased by Osborne, the bookseller, for less money 
than the bindings had cost their collector. Osborne, 
in turn, sold the book for fifteen shillings ; then it 
came into the hands of Dr. Gifford, a Baptist minister, 
who bequeathed it to the college in his native city. 
In the same college, amongst many other Biblical 
treasures and curiosities, is a copy of what is called 
the Droll-Error Tyndale. It is a handsome volume, 
well printed upon good paper, but full of printers' 
blunders. Amongst them is that which has given 
a name to the edition ; thus, 2 Cor. x., instead of 
"Let him that is such think on this wise," the 
printer has put "Let hym that is foche (long s) 
think on his wyfe." This book is supposed to be 
later in date than either the octavo or quarto 
editions, but it may be perhaps most conveniently 
referred to here. 

The spirit in which the work of translation was 
undertaken by Tyndale appears in his prologue : — 

" I have translated, brethren and sisters most 
dear and tenderly beloved in Christ, the New Testa- 
ment for your spiritual edifying, consolation, and 
solace, exhorting instantly, and beseeching those 



A MAN WITHOUT A PATTERN. 53 

that are better seen in the tongues than I, and that 
have higher gifts of grace to interpret the sense of 
Scripture and the meaning of the Spirit than I, to 
consider and ponder my labour, and that with the 
spirit of meekness, if they perceive in any places 
that I have not attained the very sense of the tongue 
or meaning of the Scripture, or have not given the 
right English word, that they put to their hands 
to amend it, remembering that so is their duty to 
do. For we have not received the gifts of God 
for ourselves only or for to hide them, but for 
to bestow them unto the honouring of God and 
Christ, and edifying of the congregation which is 
the body of Christ/' 

Of Tyndale's qualifications for his work there can 
be no doubt whatever. Buschius, a distinguished 
German scholar, speaks of him as "so skilled in 
seven languages, Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Italian, 
Spanish, English, French, that whichever he spoke 
you would suppose it his native tongue." 

The Greek text that he followed in his transla- 
tion was, of course, that which Erasmus had given 
to the world, and although Tyndale was evidently 
more familiar with the second, he now and then 
uses the third edition. At the same time, it has 
been shown by Demaus that, " as he proceeded in his 
undertaking, Tyndale had before him the Vulgate, 
the Latin version of Erasmus, and the German of 
Luther, and that, in rendering from the original 
Greek, he carefully consulted all these aids ; but he 



54 MEN WITH A MISSION. 

did so not with the helpless imbecility of a mere 
tyro, but with the conscious independence of an 
accomplished scholar." 

At the same time, it is but justice to bear in 
mind that some of the alleged faults of our version are 
due to Tyndale. Tor example, the manner in which 
he translates the same Greek word differently in the 
same connection, and sometimes in the same verse, 
adds indeed to the beauty, but it diminishes the 
force of the book. 

But the most heinous offence in the eyes of the 
Papists, after his translating the Scripture at all, 
was the putting of notes in the margin. 

Of these we select a few examples : — . 

"Whatsoever ye bind on earth shall be bound 
in heaven ; " Tyndale says, " Here all bind and 
loose." Beside the words, " If thine eye be single, 
all thy body is full of light," he writes, " The eye is 
single when a man in all his deeds looketh but on 
the will of God, and looketh not for land, honour, or 
any other reward in this world ; neither ascribeth 
heaven nor a higher room in the heaven unto his 
deeds : but accepteth heaven as a thing purchased 
by the blood of Christ and worketh freely for love's 
sake only." 

" All good things cometh of the bountifulness, 
liberality, mercy, promises, and truth of God by the 
deserving of Christ's blood only." 

" He that hath," he thus expounds. " Where 
the Word of God is understood, there it multiplieth 



A MAN WITHOUT A PATTERN. 55 

and maketh the people better; where it is not 
understood, there it decreaseth and maketh the 
people worse." 

These notes, as we shall see, were subsequently 
omitted, but it is easy to see that they were 
calculated to give serious offence to the Eomish 
authorities. 



CHAPTER VI. 

HATED BY THE CARDINAL, BUT WORKING 
FOR GOD. 

" Many are the sayings of the wise, 
Extolling patience as the truest fortitude, 
But with the afflicted in his pangs their sound 
Little prevails, . . . unless he feel within 
Some source of consolation from above, 
Secret refreshings that repair his strength, 
And fainting spirits uphold." 

— Milton. 

" When such men use great plainness of speech we must not 
complain much, since they purchase it at a high price —their life- 
BLOOD." — DAVIES. 



LEAVES WORMS FOR MARBURG — FARTHER FROM ROME, YET 
NEARER TO THE TRUTH— " THE WICKED MAMMON," AND 
" THE OBEDIENCE OF A CHRISTIAN MAN "—READ BY KING 
HENRY—" THE PRACTICE OF PRELATES "—NOTES ON THE 
PENTATEUCH. 

Tyndale, it is supposed, reached Worms after his 
hurried flight to Cologne about October 1525, and 
there he remained for two years. Until the follow- 
ing April or May, he would be fully occupied with 
the labour which the issuing of the three thousand 
octavo and the three thousand quarto Testaments 
56 



HATED BY THE CARDINAL. 57 

from the press involved. Immediately that this 
was accomplished, he parted cheerfully from his 
troublesome friend William Rove. 

It has also been supposed that during his resi- 
dence in Worms, Tyndale gave himself to the study 
of Hebrew, as a qualification for his work of trans- 
lation. 

In the year 1528 he left Worms for Marburg, 
which, under the rule of Landgrave Philip, was 
one of the most eminent of the Protestant cities 
of Germany. Here the work of the Reformation 
had been more thorough than in any other part 
of the Empire, as the Landgrave himself w 7 as a 
believer in Zwingle's doctrine. Here Tyndale was 
both in safety, and yet in the society of learned 
men, who were able to assist him in his arduous 
enterprise. Por the Landgrave had done his very 
utmost to attract men of piety and letters to his 
capital, and the reformed flocked to it as to a second 
metropolis of religion, and as next to Wittemberg, 
Here Tyndale met with the heroic Patrick Hamilton 
and other young men from Scotland, and here, also, 
he conversed with Barnes, who was then a fugitive 
from the Papal persecution which still raged in 
England. Sir Thomas More declared that Barnes 
then induced Tyndale to abandon the Lutheran 
view of the Sacrament, and his testimony is pro- 
bably correct. In his Confutation he says : — - 

" Friar Barnes was of Zwinglia's sect against the 
sacrament of the altar, believing that it is nothing but 



58 MEN WITH A MISSION. 

bare bread. But Tyndale was yet at that time not 
fully fallen so far in that point, but though he were 
bad enough beside, he was yet not content with 
Friar Barnes for holding of that heresy. But within 
a while after, as he that is falling is soon put 
over, the Friar made the fool mad outright, and 
brought him down into the deepest dungeon of 
that devilish heresy wherein he sitteth now fast 
bounden in the chair of pestilence with the chain 
of pertinacity." 

The diction and the spirit are certainly not to be 
commended, but Sir Thomas More sometimes en- 
deavoured to compensate for a bad cause by virulent 
abuse. We shall have occasion to refer again to 
some of his coarse expressions with regard to the 
Reformers, and, therefore, we now only notice the 
fact that, while at Marburg, Tyndale adopted the 
Zwin^lian view of the Sacrament. But a better 
companion than Barnes now came to comfort and 
sustain him ; he was John Fryth, whom Tyndale 
called " his own son in the faith." 

In him Tyndale found a man after his own heart, 
and the intercourse of the two friends was probably 
a mutual joy. 

About the time of Frvth's arrival in Marburg, 
Tyndale issued a book which created as great a 
sensation in England as his Testament had done. 
This was the book which is generally known as " The 
Wicked Mammon," or more fully, "The Parable of 
the Wicked Mammon." " The Wicked Mammon " 



HATED BY THE CARDINAL. 59 

is really an exposition of the parable of the Unjust 
Steward. Tyndale's main purpose in the book, how- 
ever, was to set forth the cardinal doctrine of Justi- 
fication by Faith, but in doing so he naturally assailed 
the gross errors of Eome. 

In his preface Tyndale boldly declares the Pope 
to be Antichrist, an assertion which required much 
courage at the time, and said: — 

" We had spied out Antichrist long ago if we had 
looked in the doctrine of Christ and His apostles ; 
where, because the least seeth himself now to be 
sought for, he roareth and seeketh new holes to hide 
himself in ; and changeth himself into a thousand 
fashions with all manner of vileness, falsehood, 
subtlety, and craft. Because that his excommuni- 
cations are come to light, he maketh it treason unto 
the King to be acquainted with Christ. If Christ 
and they may not reign together, one hope we have 
— that Christ shall live for ever. The old Anti- 
christs brought Christ unto Pilate, saying, ' By our 
law He ought to die ; ' and when Pilate bade them 
judge Him after their law, they answered, 'It is not 
lawful for us to kill any man ; ' which they did to the 
intent that they which regarded not the shame of 
their false communications' should yet fear to confess 
Christ, because that the temporal sword had con- 
demned Him. They do all things of a good zeal, 
they say ; they love you so well, that they had rather 
burn you than that you should have fellowship with 
Christ. They are jealous over your armies, as saith 



60 MEN WITH A MISSION. 

St. Paul. They would divide you from Christ and 
His Holy Testament, and join you to the Pope to 
believe in his testament and promise." 

The New Testament had been issued without 
Tyndale's name upon it, but at length the secret of 
his authorship had leaked out. Now with a sub- 
lime scorn both for the prelates and for their malice, 
Tyndale continues : — 

" Some men will ask peradventure why I take the 
labour to make this work, inasmuch as they will 
burn it, seeing they burnt the Gospel ? I answer, 
In huming the New Testament they did none other 
thing than that I looked for ; NO more shall they 

DO IF THEY BURN ME ALSO ; IF IT BE GOD'S WILL, IT 
SHALL SO BE." 

Then Tyndale concludes his preface thus: — : 
" Nevertheless, in translating the New Testament I 
did my duty, and so do I now, and will do as much 
more as God hath ordained me to do. And as I 
offered that to all men to correct it wdiosoever 
could, even so I do this. Whosoever, therefore, 
readeth this, compare it unto the Scriptures. If 
God's Word bear record unto it, and thou feelest in 
thine heart that it is so, be of good comfort and 
give God thanks. If God's Word condemn it, then 
hold it accused, and so do with other doctrines; as 
Paul counselleth his Galatians. Believe not every 
spirit suddenly, but judge them by the Word of 
God, which is the trial of all doctrine, and lasteth 
for ever. Amen ! " 



HATED BY THE CARDINAL. 61 

" That precious thing which must be in the heart 
ere a man can work any good work/' says Tyndale, 
" is the Word of God which in the Gospel preacheth, 
proffereth, and bringeth unto all that repent and 
believe the favour of God in Christ. "Whoso heareth 
the Word and believeth it, the same is thereby 
righteous. Therefore it is called the Word of life, 
the Word of grace, the Word of health, the Word 
of redemption, the Word of forgiveness, and the 
Word of peace. For of what nature soever the 
Word of God is, of the same nature must the 
hearts be which believe thereon and cleave there- 
unto. Now is the Word living, pure, righteous, 
and true ; and even so maketh it the hearts of 
them that believe thereon." 

Upon the duty of every man to help and to love 
his neighbour Tyndale is very emphatic, and his 
teachings are beautifully illustrated by his own self- 
denying life : — 

" It is a wonderful love wherewith a man loveth 
himself. As glad as I would be to receive pardon 
of mine own life (if I had deserved death), so glad 
ought I to be to defend my neighbour's life, with- 
out respect of my life or my goods. A man ought 
neither to spare his goods, nor yet himself, for his 
brother's sake, after the example of Christ." 

He even goes so far as to say : " If thy neighbour 
need, and thou help him not, being able, thou 
withholdest his duty from him, and art a thief 
before God. . . . Every Christian man to another 



62 MEN WITH A MISSION. 

is Christ Himself, and thy neighbour's need hath as 
good right in thy goods as hath Christ Himself, 
which is heir and lord of all. And look what 
thou owest to Christ, that thou owest to thy neigh- 
bour's need. To thy neighbour owest thou thine 
heart, thyself, and all that thou hast and canst do. 
. . . Thus is every man that needeth thine help thy 
father, mother, sister, and brother in Christ ; even 
as every man that doeth the will of the Father is 
father, mother, sister, and brother unto Christ." 

Probably no Christian teacher in that age would 
have dared to have written such words as the follow- 
ing ; for the spirit of national hostility was very strong, 
and the persecuting mania was terribly prevalent :— 

" Moreover, if any be an infidel and a false Chris- 
tian, and forsake his household, his wife, children, 
and such as cannot help themselves, then art thou 
bound, if thou have therewith, even as much as to 
thine own household. And they have as good 
right in thy goods as thou thyself; and if thou 
withdraw mercy from them, and hast wherewith to 
help them, then art thou a thief. If thou show 
mercy, so doest thou thy duty and art a faithful 
minister in the household of Christ ; and of Christ 
shalt thou have thy reward and thanks." 

Such doctrine was far in advance of the age, but 
it is interesting to notice how thus, as in some 
other things, Tyndale was far ahead of his con- 
temporaries. 

Simultaneously with " The Wicked Mammon," 



HATED BY THE CARDINAL. 63 

Tyndale issued another work, which was almost of as 
much importance to the Reformation as was his 
Bible. It is entitled " The Obedience of a Christian 
Man," and is both a defence of the Reformers from 
the charge of sedition, and also a call to them to 
persist in the path of duty in spite of persecution. 
"Adversity I receive at the hand of God is a 
wholesome medicine, though it be somewhat bitter," 
said Tyndale. 

" Peter, Peter ! " he exclaims when speaking 
of the sins of the clergy, " thou wast too long a 
fisher; thou wast never brought up at the Arches, 
neither wast Master of the Rolls, nor yet Chancellor 
of England. . . . The parson sheareth, the vicar 
shaveth, the parish priest pilleth, the friar scrapeth, 
and the pardoner pareth ; we lack but a butcher 
to pull the skin.' 3 

He concludes with these noble words : " Re- 
member that Christ is the end of all things. He 
only is our resting-place, He is our peace. For as 
there is no salvation in any other name, so there is 
no peace in any other name. Thou shalt never 
have rest in thy soul, neither shall the worm of 
conscience ever cease to gnaw thine heart, till thou 
come at Christ ; till thou hear the glad tidings, how 
that God for His sake hath forgiven thee all freely. 
If thou trust in thy works, there is no rest. Thou 
shalt think, I have not done enough. ... If thou 
trust in confession then shalt thou think, Have I 
told all ? . . . Likewise in our holy pardons and 



64 MEN WITH A MISSION, 

pilgrimages gettest thou no rest. As pertaining to 
good deeds, therefore, do the best thou canst, and 
desire God to give strength to do better daily ; but 
in Christ put thy trust, and in the pardon and pro- 
mises that God hath made thee for His sake ; and 
on that rock build thine house and there dwell." 

Such words were well calculated to stimulate and 
to comfort the persecuted, and it is, therefore, no 
wonder that they introduced an element into English 
religious life that was most important and unhappily 
infrequent before. Bilney, for example, had re- 
canted, but after suffering long and acute distress 
of mind, " he came at length to some quiet of con- 
science, being fully resolved to give over his life for 
the confession of that truth which before he had 
denounced. He took his leave in Trinity Hall of 
certain of his friends, and said he would go up to 
Jerusalem. . . . And so, setting forth on his journey 
toward the celestial Jerusalem, he departed from 
thence to the anchoress in Norwich, and there gave 
her a New Testament of Tyndale's translation and 
' The Obedience of a Christian Man/ whereupon he 
was apprehended and carried to prison, there to 
remain till the blind Bishop Nixe sent up for a 
writ to burn him." 

Of Bainham, who was another who had abjured, 
Foxe says that he " was never quiet in mind or 
conscience until the time he had uttered his fall to 
all his acquaintance and asked God and all the 
world forgiveness. And the next Sunday after he 



HATED BY THE CARDINAL. 65 

came to St. Austin's with the New Testament in 
his hand in English and ' The Obedience of a 
Christian Man ' in his bosom, and stood up there 
before all the people in his pew, there declaring 
openly, with weeping tears, that he had denied God. 
After this he was strengthened above the cruel 
death by fire with remarkable courage." 

This book came into the hands of the King 
of England himself, and Strype thus relates the 
incident : " Upon the Lady Anne Boleyn waited 
a fair young gentlewoman named Mrs. Gaynsford ; 
and in her service was also retained Mr. George 
Zouch, father to Sir John Zouch. This gentleman, 
of a comely, sweet person, was a suitor in way of 
marriage to the said young lady ; and, among other 
love-tricks, once he plucked from her a book in 
English called Tyndale's ' Obedience/ which the 
Lady Anne had lent her to read. About which 
time the Cardinal had given commandment to the 
prelates, and especially to Dr. Simpson, Dean of the 
King's Chapel, that they should keep a vigilant eye 
over all people for such books that they come not 
abroad ; that so, as much as might be, they might 
not come to the King's reading. But this which 
he most feared fell out upon this occasion. For 
Mr. Zouch was so ravished with the Spirit of God, 
speaking now as well in the heart of the reader as 
first it did in the heart of the maker of the book, 
that he was never well but when he was reading 
of that book. Mrs. Gaynsford wept because she 

E 



66 MEN WITH A MISSION. 

could not get the book from her wooer, and he was 
as ready to weep to deliver it. But see the pro- 
vidence of God ; Mr. Zouch, standing in the chapel 
before Dr. Simpson, ever reading upon this book. 
and the Dean, never having his eye off the book 
in the gentleman's hand, called to him, and then 
snatched the book out of his hand, asked his name, 
and whose man he was. And the book he delivered 
to the Cardinal. In the meantime the Lady Anne 
asketh her woman for the book. She on her knees 
told all the circumstances. The Lady Anne showed 
herself not sorry nor angry with either of the two. 
But said she, ' Well, it shall be the dearest book 
that ever the Dean or Cardinal took away.' The 
noble woman goes to the King, and upon her knees 
she desireth the King's help for her book. Upon 
the King's token the book was restored. And 
now bringing the book to him, she besought his 
Grace most tenderly to read it. The King did so, 
and delighted in the book ; for saith he, ' This hook 
is for me and all Kings to read. 3 And in a little 
time the King, by the help of this virtuous lady, 
had his eyes opened to the truth, to search the 
truth, to advance God's religion and glory, to abhor 
the pope's doctrine, his lies, his pomp and pride, to 
deliver his subjects out of the Egyptian darkness, 
the Babylonian bonds, that the pope had brought 
him and his subjects under." 

Wyatt repeats this story with some interesting 
variations, for he says that Anne was " but newly 



HATED BY THE CARDINAL. 67 

come from the King, when the Cardinal came in 
with the book in his hands to make complaints of 
certain points in it that he knew the King would 
not like of. And withal to take occasion with 
him against those that countenanced such books in 
general, and especially women, and as might be 
thought with mind to go farther against the Queen 
more directly, if he had perceived the King agree- 
able to his meaning. But the King, that somewhat 
afore disliked the Cardinal, finding the notes the 
Queen had made, all turned the more to hasten his 
ruin which was also furthered on all sides." 

So that the Cardinal in reality digged a pit and 
then stumbled into it ; and Henry for once in his 
life read and admired the faithful setting forth of 
truth ! Alas that Tyndale's own obedience should 
be unto death ! But so it proved to be with him. 

In 1530 Tyndale left Marburg and returned 
once more to Hamburg. During the same year 
he also published another book, which he entitled 
" The Practice of Prelates." 

In this book occurs the famous similitude, which 
we here subjoin : — 

" And to see how our holy father the pope came up, 
mark the ensample of an ivy-tree : first it springeth 
out of the earth, and then awhile creepeth along by 
the ground till it findeth a great tree ; then it 
joineth itself beneath alow into the body of the tree, 
and creepeth up a little, and a little, fair and softly. 
And, at the beginning, while it is yet thin and 



68 MEN WITH A MISSION. 

small, that the burthen is not perceived, it seemeth 
glorious to garnish the tree in the winter, and to 
bear off the tempests of the weather. But in the 
mean season it thrusteth roots into the bark of the 
tree to hold fast withal, and ceaseth not to climb up 
till it be at the top, and above all. And then it 
sendeth his branches along by the branches of the 
tree, and overgroweth all, and waxeth great, heavy, 
and thick ; and sucketh the moisture so sore out of 
the tree and his branches, that it choketh and stifleth 
them. And then the foul stinking ivy waxeth 
mighty in the stump of the tree, and becometh a 
seat and a nest for all unclean birds, and for blind 
owls which hawk in the dark, and dare not come 
at the light. 

" Even so the bishop of Eome, now called pope, 
at the beginning crope along upon the earth, and 
every man trod upon him in this world. But as 
soon as there came a Christian emperor, he joined 
himself into his feet and kissed them, and crope up 
a little with begging, now this privilege, now that ; 
now this city, now that ; to find poor people withal, 
and the necessary ministers of God's Word. And 
he entitled the emperor with choosing the pope and 
other bishops, and promoted in the spiritualty, not 
whom virtue and learning, but whom the favour of 
great men, commendeth ; to flatter, to get friends 
and defenders, withal. 

a And the alms of the congregation, which was 
the food and patrimony of the poor and necessary 



HATED BY THE CARDINAL. 69 

preachers, that he called St. Peter's patrimony, St. 
Peter's rents, St. Peter's lands, St. Peter's right ; to 
cast a vain fear, and an heathenish superstitiousness 
into the hearts of men, that no man should dare 
meddle whatsoever came once into their hands, for 
fear of St. Peter, though they ministered it never so 
evil; and that they which should think it none alms 
to give them any more (because they had too much 
already) should yet give St. Peter somewhat (as 
Nebuchadnezzar gave his god Baal), to purchase an 
advocate and an intercessor of St. Peter, and that 
St. 'Peter should, at the first knock, let them in. 

" And thus, with flattering and feigning, and vain 
superstition, under the name of St. Peter, he crept 
up and fastened his roots in the heart of the em- 
peror, and with his sword climbed up above all his 
fellowships, and brought them under his feet. And 
as he subdued them with the emperor's sword, even 
so by subtilty and help of them (after that they 
were sworn faithful) he climbed above the emperor, 
and subdued him also, and made stoop unto his feet, 
and kiss them another while. Yea, pope Coelestinus 
crowned the emperor Henry the Fifth, holding the 
crown between his feet. And when he had put 
the crown on, he smote it off with his feet again, 
saying that he had might to make emperors, and 
put them down again. 

"And he made a constitution that no layman 
should meddle with their matters, nor be in their 
councils, or wit what they did ; and that the pope 



70 MEN WITH A MISSION. 

only should call the council, and the empire should 
but defend the pope, provided always that the coun- 
cil should be in one of the pope's towns, and where 
the pope's power was greater than the emperor's; 
then, under a pretence of condemning some heresy, 
he called a general council, where he made one a 
patriarch, another cardinal, another legate, another 
primate, another archbishop, another bishop, another 
dean, another archdeacon, and so forth, as we now 
see. And as the pope played with the emperor, so 
did his branches, his members, the bishops, play in 
every kingdom, dukedom, and lordship : inasmuch 
that the very heirs of them, by whom they came up, 
hold now their lands of them, and take them for 
their chief lords. And as the emperor is sworn to 
the pope, even so every king is sworn to the bishops 
and prelates of his realm ; and they are the chiefest 
in all parliaments ; yea, they and their money, and 
they that be sworn to them, and come up by them, 
rule altogether. 

" And thus the pope, the father of all hypocrites, 
hath with falsehood and guile perverted the order of 
the world, and turned the roots of the trees upward, 
and hath put down the kingdom of Christ, and set 
up the kingdom of the devil, whose vicar he is ; and 
hath put down the ministers of Christ, and hath set 
up the ministers of Satan, disguised, yet in names, and 
garments, like unto the angels of light and ministers 
of righteousness. For Christ's kingdom is not of the 
world ; and the pope's kingdom is all the world." 



HATED BY THE CARDINAL. 71 

But Tyndale was not only active in his attack 
upon error ; he was not less indefatigable in promul- 
gating truth. For on the 17th of January in the 
same year, 1 530, he issued from the press his trans- 
lation of the Pentateuch. The notes in the margin 
in this translation are even more vigorous than those 
in the New Testament Thus Tyndale says : " To 
bless a man's neighbour is to pray for him and to 
wish him good, and not to wag two fingers over 
him." "If we answer not our prelates, when 
they be angry even as they would have it, we must 
to the fire without redemption or forswear God." 
Upon Exodus xxxiv. 20, "None shall appear before 
Me empty," Tyndale says, " That is a good text for 
the pope." To Balaam's question, " How shall I 
curse when God hath not cursed ? " Tyndale notes, 
"The pope can tell how." 

Such words are not to be considered without due 
reflection as to the circumstances under which they 
were written. Tyndale had been long an exile, and 
he knew that plots had been again and again laid to 
entrap him. Although for a time he might hope to 
elude his persecutors, he well knew that eventually 
he must fall a victim to their cruelty, as many others 
had done before him. And he believed himself to 
be called of God for the purpose of combating the 
gigantic form of error that, like Apollyon, " straddled 
right across " the King's highway and withstood the 
pilgrims in the way to the Celestial City. Yet, 
although some may not approve of the notes, the 



72 MEN WITH A MISSION. 

counsel that is given in the prologue to Genesis will 
be read by all spiritual Christians with unqualified 
approval : — 

" Though a man had a precious jewel and rich, 
yet if he wist not the value thereof, nor wherefore it 
served, he were neither the better nor richer of a 
straw. Even so, though we read the Scripture, and 
babble of it never so much, yet if we know not the 
use of it, and wherefore it was given, and what 
is therein to be sought, it profiteth us nothing at all. 
It is not enough, therefore, to read and talk of it 
only, but we must also desire God, day and night 
instantly, to open our eyes, and to make us under- 
stand and feel wherefore the Scripture was given, 
that we may apply the medicine of Scripture, every 
man to his own sores ; unless that we intend to be 
idle disputers and brawlers about vain words, ever 
gnaiving upon the hitter hark without, and never 
attaining to the sweet pith within." 



CHAPTEE VII. 

NOT SECOND TO A GLADIATOR; OR, STRONG 
FOR THE TRUTH. 

" Thou shouldst be living at this hour : 
^England hath need of thee ; ... we are selfish men. 
Oh ! raise us up, return to us again, 
And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power." 

— Milton. 

il Reformers are not distinguished for their politeness — Luther 
and Knox, to wit. They are men raised by God to arrest the current 
of regenerate times, and to challenge sins which have become con- 
ventional and respectable ; and, therefore, to tear in tatters sickly 
civilities which conceal beneath them a hell of sin and vice." — 
Echoes from the Welsh Hills. 



SIR THOMAS MORE THE ADVOCATE OF THE BISHOPS— TYN- 
DALE'S CRUSHING REPLY— MORE'S GROSS ABUSE AND 
FOUL LANGUAGE— PUBLIC OPINION WITH TYNDALE. 

Tyndale, of course, was not suffered to continue his 
labours unassailed, for no less an antagonist than Sir 
Thomas More entered the lists against him. What- 
ever may be More's claims to admiration, it must 
ever be considered to be a foul blot upon his char- 
acter that he assailed Tyndale with low, scurrilous 
abuse. As early as the year 1728, Tunstal, the 
73 



74 MEN WITH A MISSION. 

polished Bishop of London (who had previously so 
unceremoniously rejected Tyndale's offer of service), 
wrote to More inviting him to undertake the task 
of stemming the tide of heretical books which, in 
spite of his utmost endeavours, continued to flow 
into England. " Forasmuch," said the Bishop, "as 
you can play the Demosthenes both in our native 
tongue and in Latin, and are wont to be a most 
zealous defender of Catholic truth in every assault, 
you will never be able to make a better use of any 
spare hours that you can redeem from your occupa- 
tion, than by publishing in our native tongue some- 
thing that will expose even to rude and simple 
people the crafty malice of the heretics, and make 
them better prepared against those impious enemies 
of the Church." Copies of the books to which he 
was to reply were forwarded to More, and the 
Chancellor was reminded of the example of his 
monarch, who had won the title of Defender of the 
Faith by his book against Luther. More readily 
complied with this request, and after a year of study 
he published a large volume which specified Luther 
and Tyndale as his chief objects of attack. The 
book is in the form of a dialogue, which is, of 
course, a most convenient form of eluding an awk- 
ward attack. 

" Look on Tyndale," says Sir Thomas More, 
" how in his wicked book of ' Mammon/ and after 
in his malicious book of ' Obedience/ he showed 
himself so puffed up with the poison of pride, 



NOT SECOND TO A GLADIATOR. 75 

malice, and envy, that it is more than marvel that 
the skin can hold together. . . . He knoweth that 
all the fathers teach that there is the lire of 
purgatory, which I marvel why he feareth so little, 
as if he be at a plain point with himself to go 
straight to hell/' Anderson, in his " Aimals of the 
Bible," in speaking of this attack of More's says : 
" The English language has never been so prosti- 
tuted before Sir Thomas More took up the pen. 
. . . No solitary selected expressions can convey 
an adequate idea of the virulence, not to say the 
verbosity and fallacious reasoning, of this writer ; " 
and the majority of unbiassed readers will probably 
endorse this severe verdict. Sir Thomas More's 
book was published in June 1529, and during the 
spring of 1531 Tyndale published his reply to it — 
an answer which must be admitted by all impartial 
men to effectually dispose of More and his flimsy 
attempts at reasoning. 

The following extract from the section in which 
Tyndale treats of ceremonies will furnish an ex- 
ample of his rugged, earnest method of argument. 
He says : " How cometh it that a poor layman, 
having wife and twenty children, and not able to 
maintain them, though all his neighbours know his 
necessity, shall not get with begging for Christ's 
sake in a long summer's day enough to maintain 
them two days honestly; when if a disguised monster 
come, he shall, with an hour's lying in the pulpit, 
get enough to maintain thirty or forty sturdy lubbers 



76 MEN WITH A MISSION. 

a month long, of which the weakest shall be as 
strong in the belly when he cometh unto the manger, 
as the mightiest porter in the custom-house, or the 
best courser that is in the King's stable ? . . . Who 
thinketh it as good a deed to feed the poor as to 
stick up a candle before a post, or as to sprinkle it 
with holy water ? . . . As though God were better 
pleased when I sprinkled myself with water, or 
set up a candle before a block, than if I fed or 
clothed, or helped at his need, him whom He so 
tenderly loveth that He gave His own Son unto 
the death for him, and commandeth me to love 
him as myself. . . . Christ's death purchased grace 
for man's soul, to repent of evil, and to believe in 
Christ for remission of sins, and to love the law 
of God, and his neighbour as himself. Which is 
the true worshipping of God in the spirit; and 
He died not to purchase such honour for unsen- 
sible things, that man to his dishonour should do 
them honourable service, and receive his salvation 
of them." 

This is vigorous writing, and is well calculated 
to answer its purpose; that is, of destroying the 
subtleties by means of which More and other Eomish 
advocates endeavoured to deceive and to beguile the 
unwary. So keenly did the Papal party feel the 
importance of Tyndale's book, that More was com- 
pelled, in spite of all his many employments, to 
attempt a rejoinder at once. This volume, upon 
which he lavished great pains, More had to confess 



NOT SECOND TO A GLADIATOR. 77 

to be a failure ; men did not read it and one does 
not wonder at their reluctance. A specimen only 
will suffice of this vaunted defence of the Papacy 
upon the part of gentle Thomas More ; in justice 
to Tyndale, this and similar passages should be 
remembered by all admirers of the Chancellor : — 

"This devilish drunken soul (Tyndale!) doth 
abominably blaspheme, and calleth them {i.e., the 
schoolmen) liars and falsifiers of Scripture, and 
maketh them no better than draff. But this drowsy 
drudge hath drunken so deep in the devil's dregs, 
that, unless he wake and repent himself, the sinner, 
he may hap ere long to fall into the mashing 
fat, and turn himself into draff, as of which the 
hogs of hell shall feed upon, and fill their bellies 
thereof/' 

Nothing can justify the employment of such 
language, and the offence appears to be the more 
heinous when we remember that Tyndale was 
at that time enduring poverty and exile, while 
More was enjoying the emoluments of office and 
the favour of the King and Bishops ! To call such 
a man as Tyndale " a hell-hound, one of those that 
the devil hath in his kennel," can never be defended 
by any impartial reader, and our sympathies must 
therefore be wholly given to Tyndale in the con- 
troversy, as our judgment must also award the 
palm of victory to him. To Tyndale the contro- 
versy was one not merely of life and death, for he 
viewed the question in its eternal issues. One 



78 MEN WITH A MISSION. 

would not wonder if he used somewhat strong 
language when he realised what the Papacy is in 
itself, and what its treatment of men, even of its 
adherents, means in degradation and defilement; but 
such scurrilous language as More employs at once 
stains his own character, and also shows his keen 
consciousness of having a bad case. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

BRIBES AND BAIT; OR, THE FLY WHO WOULD 
NOT ENTER THE SPIDER'S WEB. 

" The fairest action of our human life 
Is scorning to avenge an injury ; 
For who forgives without a further strife, 
His adversary's heart to him doth tie. 
And 'tis a fairer conquest, truly said, 
To win the heart than overthrow the head." 

— Lady Carew. 

"Hope is like the sun, whicjjj^as we journey towards it, casts the 
shadow of our burden behind usT^^Dk. Smiles. 

" Scarcely can we fix our eyes upon a single passage in this 
wonderful Book which has not afforded comfort and instruction 
to thousands, and been met with tears of penitential sorrow, or 
grateful joy, drawn from eyes that will weep no more." — Dr. 
Payson. 



ATTEMPTS TO INDUCE TYNDALE TO RETURN TO ENGLAND— 
THE INTERVIEW IN THE MEADOW— TYNDALE'S PATHETIC 
APPEAL AND HIS NOBLE OFFER. 

In England, Thomas Cromwell, the hammerman, had 
succeeded Wolsey in the supreme direction of affairs. 
So long as he possessed the King's ear, the Eeformers 
were secure of at least one friend, and Henry him- 

79 



So MEN WITH A MISSION. 

self was prosperous and successful so long as he 
followed the guidance of his great Minister. 

Cromwell was a politician and not a Eeformer, 
but all his instincts were in favour of those who 
pleaded for an overthrow of the Papal corruptions 
and tyranny. It is true that in pursuing his pur- 
pose Cromwell now and then adopted measures 
that cannot be defended, but his policy was, after 
all, that which, if pursued systematically instead of 
spasmodically, would have secured the independ- 
ence and prosperity of the realm. Cromwell took 
Latimer into his favour, and endeavoured to employ 
his preaching talents in the furtherance of his designs. 
He now endeavoured to induce Tyndale to return 
home to England, hoping possibly that the great 
translator would also co-operate with him in working 
out his plans. Stephen Vaughan, one of the English 
envoys to the Low Countries, was the messenger who 
was employed for this purpose ; and at Cromwell's in- 
stance he wrote three letters to three different places 
whence he supposed they might reach Tyndale. 

This was in the year 1530; and the result of 
Vaughan's inquiries into the whereabouts and doings 
of the Eeformer was a high appreciation on his part 
both of Tyndale's abilities and character. " The 
man is of greater knowledge than the King's High- 
ness doth take him for," wrote Vaughan to Cromwell, 
" which well appeareth by his works. Would God 
he were in England ! " 

Tyndale probably did not take the same view of 



BRIBES AND BAIT. 81 

the case as Vaughan, for about this time his brother 
John in England was sentenced by the Star Chamber 
to be exhibited in Cheapside upon horseback with 
his face to the horse's tail. John Tyndale was 
further compelled to pay a considerable fine, and 
this punishment was inflicted because he had sent 
money and letters to his brother William Tyndale, 
and had, moreover, committed the further enormity 
of receiving and selling Testaments ! 

Tyndale had means of obtaining information as to 
all these doings in England, and he was therefore 
somewhat sceptical as to the good faith of Vaughan. 
At last he consented to meet the English envoy, 
and accordingly an interview took place between 
them " without the gates of Antwerp, in a field lying 
nigh to the same. At our meeting, 'Do you not 
know me ? ' said this Tyndale. £ I do not well 
remember you/ said I to him. ' My name is 
Tyndale/ said he. ' But, Tyndale/ said I, ' fortunate 
be our meeting.' Then said Tyndale, c Sir, I have 
been exceeding desirous to speak with you— I am 
informed that the King's Grace taketh great dis- 
pleasure witli me for putting forth of certain books 
which I lately made in these parts, but especially 
for the book named 'The Practice of Prelates/ whereof 
I have no little marvel, considering that in it I did 
but warn his Grace of the subtle demeanour of the 
clergy of his realm towards his person, and of the 
shameful abuses by them practised, not a little 
threatening the displeasure of his Grace and weal 

F 



82 MEN WITH A MISSION. 

of his realm ; in which doing I showed and de- 
clared the heart of a true subject, which sought 
the safeguard of his Royal person, and weal of his 
commons, to the intent that his Grace, thereof 
warned, might, in due time, prepare his remedies 
against the subtle dreams. If for my pains therein 
taken — if for my poverty — if for my exile out of my 
natural country, and being absent from my friends— 
if for my hunger, my thirst, my cold, the great danger 
wherewith I am everyiuhere compassed — and finally, 
if for innumerable other hard and, sharp sicknesses 
which I endure, not yet feeling their asperity, by 
reason I hoped with my labours to do honour to God, 
true service to my Prince, and pleasure to his commons 
— how is that his Grace, this considering, may either 
by himself think, or by the persuasions of others 
be brought to think, that in this doing I should not 
show a pure mind, a true and incorrupt zeal, and 
affection to his Grace ? 

" l Was there in me any such mind when I warned 
his Grace to beware of his Cardinal, whose iniquity 
he shortly after proved ? Doth this deserve hatred ? 
Again, may his Grace, being a Christian prince, be 
so unkind to God, which hath commanded His Word 
to be spread throughout the world, to give more faith 
to wicked persuasions of men, who, contrary to that 
which Christ expressly commandeth in His Testa- 
ment, dare say that it is not lawful for the people 
to have the same in a tongue that they understand ; 
because the purity thereof should open men's eyes 



BRIBES AND BAIT. 83 

to see their wickedness ? As I now am, very death 
were more pleasant to me than life, considering mans 
nature to he such as can bear no truth.' " 

At a second interview Tyndale went further, and 
said, " with water in his eyes," as Vaughan observed, 
" If it would stand with the King's most gracious 
pleasure to grant only a bare text of Scripture to 
be put forth among his people, like as is put forth 
among the subjects of the Emperor in these parts, 
and of other Christian princes, be it of the transla- 
tion of what person soever shall please his Majesty, I 
shall immediately make faithful promise never to 
write more, nor abide two days in these parts after 
the same ; but immediately to repair into his realm, 
and there most humbly submit myself at the feet 
of his Royal Majesty, offering my body to suffer what 
pain or torture, yea, what death his Grace will, so that 
this be obtained. And till that time I will abide the 
asperity of all chances, whatsoever shall come, and 
endure my life, in as much pains as it is able to 
bear and suffer." 

A third time Vaughan met Tyndale, and again 
the envoy attempted in vain to induce him to 
venture back into England. Tyndale knew Henry 
too well to do so, and he was providentially kept 
from making this rash experiment, for his work 
was not as yet finished. 

It is somewhat difficult to believe, with Demaus, 
that King Henry was quite honourable in approving 
or in permitting these negotiations. The almost 



84 MEN WITH A MISSION. 

unanimous opinion of all, until quite recently, was, 
that Henry was at least a consenting party to 
Tyndale's murder. To a man like Henry the life 
of Tyndale was but of little moment ; and, from his 
treatment of others, it is probable that, had Tyndale 
ventured to return home, even with the promised 
security of the Eoyal word, he would have suffered 
the fate that befell many good men about this time. 
The rumours that reached Tyndale from time to 
time would make him chary of trusting Henry's 
promise ; and at the very period that Vaughan was 
endeavouring to persuade Tyndale to confide in the 
King, Tyndale knew that a fierce persecution was 
raging in England against those who did not believe 
and act in religious matters as the King and Convo- 
cation were pleased to appoint. 

For example, Tyndale would have heard that 
William Tracy, a Gloucestershire gentleman, and a 
former friend of his, had just before died, and that 
his will, instead of the usual invocation of Mary 
and of the saints, began thus : — 

" First, and before all other things, I commit 
myself to God and His mercy ; believing, without 
any doubt or mistrust, that by His grace, and the 
merits of Jesus Christ, and by the virtue of His 
passion and His resurrection, I have, and shallhave, 
remission of all my sins, and also resurrection of 
body and soul, according as it is written : ' I believe 
that my Eedeemer liveth, and that in the last day I 
shall rise out of the earth, and in my flesh shall see 



BRIBES AND BAIT. 85 

my Saviour ; ' this my hope is laid up iu my bosom. 
And, touching my soul, this faith is sufficient, as I 
suppose, without any other man's works or merits. 
My confidence and belief is, that there is but one 
God, and one Mediator between God and man, 
which is Jesus Christ ; so that I take none in 
heaven nor in earth to be mediator between me 
and God, but only Jesus Christ. All others be but 
petitioners for receiving of grace, but none are able 
to give influence of grace, and, therefore, I will not 
bestow any part of my goods with an intent that 
any man should say or do anything to help my 
soul, for therein I trust only in the promises of 
Christ. And touching the distribution of my tem- 
poral goods, my purpose is, by the grace of God, to 
bestow them to be accepted as the fruits of faith, 
so that I do not suppose that my merit shall be by 
the good bestowing of them, but my merit is the 
faith of Jesus Christ only, by whom such works are 
good. And w 7 e should ever consider that true say- 
ing, that a good work maketh not a good man, but 
a good man maketh a good work ; for faith maketh 
a man both good and righteous; 'for a righteous 
man liveth by faith, and whatsoever springeth not 
of faith is sin' " (Eom. xiv.). 

This will was condemned by Convocation as 
" proud, scandalous, contradictory, impious, and 
heretical," and it was decreed that Tracy's body 
should be exhumed and cast out of consecrated 
ground as a heretic. 



S6 MEN WITH A MISSION, 

This dishonour to the dead was not the only proof 
of active hostility that the clergy and King mani- 
fested, for even the living were compelled to feel 
their vengeance. No wonder is it, when he heard 
of such things as the martyrdom of Bilney and 
of others, that Tvndale feared to return to Ensr- 
land, even if he had the guarantee of the King's 
word. And yet he declared that he was ready to 
do so if only the King would permit a translation 
of the Scriptures to be circulated in England ; to 
secure this boon for his fellow-countrymen Tyndale 
was quite content to die. Alas ! the Bible was not 
to be as yet circulated in England. 



CHAPTER IX. 

A FRIEND UNTO DEATH ; OR, COMFORTING A 
SUFFERER. 

"A friend is worth all hazards we can run, 
Poor is the friendless master of a world. 
A world in purchase for a friend were gain, 5 ' 

— Young. 

" Be still, fond heart, nor ask thy fate to know ; 

Face bravely what each God-sent moment brings ; 
Above thee rules in love, through weal and woe, 
Guiding thy king and thee, the King of kings. 5 ' 

— Charles Kingsley. 

" It is not our business to stand before Scripture and admire it ; 
but to stand within, that we may believe and obey it. In the way 
of inward communion and obedience only shall we see the beauty 
of its treasures." — Dr. Angus. 



THE BOOK OF JONAH TRANSLATED— POWER LENT BY GOD 
—WANDERING BUT WORKING— COMFORTING FRYTH— 
FRYTH'S NOBLE DEFENCE— TYNDALE'S MODE OF LIFE. 

Vaughan, who during the interviews of which we 
have spoken had become strongly attached to Tyn- 
dale, was recalled by Cromwell in 1532, and a less 
scrupulous envoy was employed in his place. Sir 
Thomas Elyot, the new tool of Henry's policy, did 
87 



88 MEN WITH A MISSION. 

not seek for a friendly interview with Tyndale, as 
his predecessor had done ; but, on the contrary, he 
sought by all possible means to apprehend the 
exile. Whether this indicated a change in the 
King's intention toward Tyndale, or were merely an 
unmasking of purposes which it had been deemed 
expedient to dissemble while Vaughan was the 
envoy, the danger to Tyndale was equally as great. 
" I gave many rewards," Elyot wrote to Cromwell, 
" partly to the Emperor's servants to get knowledge, 
and partly to such as by whose means I trusted to 
apprehend Tyndale, according to the King's com- 
mandment." 

Encompassed as he thus was with snares and 
perils, Tyndale, however, did not desist from his 
heroic efforts. He eluded Elyot's plots, and success- 
fully translated and published the Book of Jonah, 
and even prefixed his initials to the preface, as he 
had not done with the New Testament. So success- 
ful, however, were the efforts of the Papists to 
suppress this book, that for a long time no copy of it 
was known to be in existence ; but in the year 1 86 1 
one was unexpectedly discovered in an old library, 
The Book of Jonah furnished Tyndale with a 
theme whereon he preached important truths to his 
fellow-countrymen. Nineveh he made a parable 
of England ; and, as did Jonah, Tyndale preached 
the need of immediate repentance. 

" Christ, to preach repentance," he wrote, " is 
risen once more out of His sepulchre, in which the 



A FRIEND UNTO DEATH. 89 

pope had buried Him, and kept Him down with his 
pillars and pole-axes and all disguisings of hypocrisy, 
with guile, wiles, and falsehood, and with the 
sword of all princes, which he had bliuded with his 
false merchandise. And as I doubt not of the en- 
samples that are past, so am I sure that great wrath 
will follow except repentance turn it back again and 
cease it." 

Beside this translation of Jonah, Tyndale also 
issued an " Exposition of the First Epistle of St. 
John " during the same year. From this " Exposi- 
tion " we extract the following passage : — 

"Preaching of the doctrine which is light," says 
Tyndale, " hath but small effect to move the heart if 
the ensample of living do disagree. . . . 

"And that we worship saints for fear, lest they 
should be displeased and angry with us, and plague 
us, or hurt us (as who is not afraid of St. Lawrence ? 
Who dare deny St. Anthony a fleece of wool, for 
fear of his terrible fire or lest he send the pox 
among our sheep ?), is heathen image service, and 
clean against the first commandment, which is, 
'Hear, Israel, the Lord thy God is one God.' 
Now, God in the Hebrew is called M, or Elohim 
in the plural number; i.e., strength or might. So 
that the commandment is : Hear, Israel, He that 
is thy power and might ; thy sword and shield is 
but One ; that is, there is none of might to help or 
hurt thee, save One, which is altogether thine, and at 
thy commandment, if thou wilt hear His voice. And 



9 o MEN WITH A MISSION. 

all other might in the world is borrowed of Him ; 
and He will lend no might against thee, contrary to 
His promises. Keep, therefore, His commandments, 
and He shall keep thee ; and if thou have broken 
them, and He have lent of His power against thee, 
repent and come again unto thy profession ; and He 
will return again unto His mercy, and fetch His 
power home again, which He lent to vex thee, because 
thou forsookest Him and brakest His command- 
ments. And fear no other creature ; for false fear 
is the cause of all idolatry," 

The dangers thickened so rapidly around Tyndaie 
that, in order to elude the restless vigilance of his 
powerful enemies, he left Antwerp for a time, and 
wandered from city to city in Germany,, homeless 
and possibly lonely. 

Yet he was not idle, for even during this period 
of wandering he issued his exposition of the Sermon 
on the Mount. The spirit and style of this work 
may be estimated from the two following extracts, 
the one taken from the Prologue, and the other from 
the exposition upon Matthew v. I 3 : — 

"To believe in Christ's blood for the remission 
of sin, and purchasing of all good promises that help 
to the life to come, and to love the law, and to 
long for the life to come, is the inward baptism of 
the soul, the only baptism that availeth in the sight 
of Christ ; the only key also to bind and loose 
sinners ; the touchstone to try all doctrines ; the 
lantern and light that scattereth and expelleth the 



A FRIEND UNTO DEATH. 91 

mist and darkness of all hypocrisy, and a preserva- 
tive against all error and heresy ; the mother of 
good works ; the earnest of everlasting life, and title 
whereby we challenge our inheritance. " 

With a terrible inner consciousness of his ow r n 
lamentable condition, the exile wrote : " True preach- 
ing is a salt that stirreth up persecution, and an 
office that no man is meet for, save he that is sea- 
soned himself before with poverty in spirit, softness, 
meekness, patience, mercifulness, pureness of heart, 
and hunger of righteousness, and looking for perse- 
cution also ; and hath his hope, comfort, and solace 
in the blessing only, and in no worldly theory." 

About this time, also, a great sorrow fell upon 
Tyndale, for his trusted friend, John Fryth, who 
had ventured into England, was there apprehended 
and brought up for trial as a heretic. Tyndale 
had some surmise as to his friend's danger before 
the tidings of Fryth's arrest reached him. He had 
written a tender letter of counsel and warning, in 
which he advised his friend to be prudent, and espe- 
cially to avoid controversy about the Sacrament. 

" Wherefore," said Tyndale, " cleave fast to the 
rock of the help of God, and commit the end of all 
things to Him ; and if God shall call you, that you 
may then use the wisdom of the worldly so far as 
you perceive the glory of God may come thereof, refuse 
it not ; and ever among thrust in that the Scripture 
may be in the mother-tongue, and learning set up 
in the Universities. But and if aught be required 



92 MEN WITH A MISSION. 

contrary to the glory of God and His Christ, then 
stand fast, and commit yourself to God ; and be 
not overcome of men's persuasions " to abjure. 
After professing his love for Fryth and his con- 
fidence in him, Tyndale says grandly : — 

" I call God to record against the day we shall 
appear before our Lord Jesus, to give a reckoning of 
our doings, that I never altered one syllable of God's 
Word against my conscience, nor would this day if all 
that is in the earth, whether it be pleasure, honour, or 
riches, might be given me. 

" My soul is not faint, though my body is weary ," 
he says pathetically and touchingly. He concludes 
his letter with a sentence which exhibits his own 
feelings : — 

"He is our God, if we despair in ourselves and 
trust in Him ; and His is the glory. Amen ! 

William Tyndale. 

" I hope our redemption is nigh." 

Fry th's bearing before his judges was princely. 
He confined his defence to four principal themes, 
and these he conclusively argued so_that his accusers 
were silenced. They were : — " I . That the Pope's 
opinion respecting the Sacrament cannot be con- 
sidered as an article of faith necessary to be be- 
lieved upon pain of damnation. 2. That, as Christ's 
natural body was in all respects like unto ours, sin 
only excepted, there can be no reason why it should 



A FRIEND UNTO DEATH. 93 

be in two or many places at once, contrary to the 
nature of our body. 3. That we are not to under- 
stand Christ's words by what we may conceive to 
be the meaning of the words, but by comparing one 
passage of Scripture with another. 4. That the 
manner in which the Sacrament is administered by 
the priests is quite different from that in which it 
was administered by Christ Himself/ 5 

In the spirit of his friend Tyndale, is also Fryth's 
vigorous and noble reply to Sir Thomas More : — 

" Until we see some means found by the which 
a reasonable Eeformation may be had, and sufficient 
instruction for the poor commoners, I assure you 
I neither can nor will cease to speak. For the 
Word of God boileth in my body like a fervent fire, 
and will needs have issue, and breaJceth out when 
occasion is given. But this hath been offered you, is 
offered, and shall be offered : Grant that the Word 
of God, I mean the text of Scripture, may go abroad in 
our English tongue, as other nations have it in their 
tongues, and my brother William Tyndale and I have 
done, and will promise you to write no more. If you 
will not grant this condition, then will WE BE doing 

WHILE WE HAVE BREATH." 

Tyndale wrote a second letter to his noble friend, 
and in it he says : — 

" Dearly beloved, be of good courage, and com- 
fort your soul with the hope of this high reward, 
and bear the image of Christ in your mortal body, 
that it may, at His coming, be made like to His, 



94 MEN WITH A MISSION. 

immortal ; and follow the example of all your 
other dear brethren which chose to suffer in hope 
of a better resurrection. Keep your conscience 
pure and undefiled, and say against that, nothing. 
Stick at necessary things, and remember the blas- 
phemies of the enemies of Christ, saying, they find 
none but will abjure rather than suffer the extremity. 
Moreover, the death of them that come again after 
they have once denied, though it be accepted with 
God and all that believe, yet it is not glorious : for 
the hypocrites say he must needs die, denying 
helpeth not. But might it have holpen, they would 
have denied five hundred times ; but seeing it would 
not help them, therefore of pure pride and mere 
malice together, they SLpeak with their mouths that 
their conscience knoweth to be false. If you give 

YOURSELF, CAST YOURSELF, YIELD YOURSELF, COMMIT 
YOURSELF WHOLLY AND ONLY TO YOUR LOVING FATHER 
— THEN SHALL HlS POAVER BE IN YOU AND MAKE YOU 

strong ; and that so strong that you shall feel no 
pain, which should be to another present death, and 
His Spirit shall speak in you, and teach you what 
to answer, according to His promise. 

" Tear not threatening, therefore, neither be over- 
come of sweet words ; with which twain methods 
the hypocrites shall assail you. Neither let the 
persuasions of worldly wisdom bear rule in your 
heart, not though they be your friends that 
counsel." 

In a postscript Tyndale adds a sentence behind 



A FRIEND UNTO DEATH. 95 

which there lies a breaking heart striving to accept 
the will of God in heroic faith : — 

" Sir, your wife is well content with the will of 
God, and would not for her sake have the glory of 
God hindered." 

The glory of God was not hindered, for Fryth 
went to the stake, and three years after his martyr- 
dom, Tyndale was also called upon in like manner 
to suffer for the truth. 

Meanwhile Tyndale had quietly settled down at 
Antwerp, and Foxe has given to us a picture of his 
life and doings there. The reader will probably 
prefer to read the narrative in Foxe's own words : — 

"And here to end and conclude this history 
with a few notes touching his private behaviour in 
diet, study, and especially his charitable zeal and 
tender relieving of the poor. First, he was a man 
very frugal and spare of body, a great student and 
earnest labourer, namely [especially] in the setting 
forth of the Scriptures of God. He reserved or 
hallowed to himself two days in the week, which 
he named his days of pastime, and those days were 
Monday the first day in the week, and Saturday 
the last day in the week. On the Monday he 
visited all such poor men and women as were 
fled out of England by reason of persecution into 
Antwerp ; and those, well understanding their good 
exercises and qualities, he did very liberally com- 
fort and relieve; and in like manner provided for 
the sick and diseased persons. On the Saturday he 



96 MEN WITH A MISSION. 

walked round about the town in Antwerp, seeking 
out every corner and hole where he suspected any 
poor person to dwell (as God knoweth there are 
many) ; and where he found any to be well occupied, 
and yet overburdened with children, or else were 
aged or weak, those also he plentifully relieved. 
And thus he spent his two days of pastime, as he 
called them. And truly his almose [alms] was 
very large and great ; and so it might well be, for 
his exhibition that he had yearly of the English 
merchants was very much ; and that for the most 
part he bestowed upon the poor, as aforesaid. The 
rest of the days in the week he gave him wholly 
to his book, wherein most diligently he travailed. 
When the Sunday came, then went he to some one 
merchant's chamber or other, whither came many 
other merchants ; and unto them would he read 
some one parcel of Scripture, either out of the Old 
Testament or out of the New ; the which proceeded 
so fruitfully, sweetly, and gently from him (much 
like to the writing of St. John the Evangelist), 
that it was a heavenly comfort and joy to the 
audience to hear him read the Scriptures ; and in 
likewise after dinner he spent an hour in the afore- 
said manner. He was a man without any spot or 
blemish of rancour or malice, full of mercy and 
compassion, so that no man living was able to 
reprove him of any kind of sin or crime ; albeit 
his righteousness and justification depended not 
thereupon before God, but only upon the blood of 



A FRIEND UNTO DEATH. 97 

Christ and his faith upon the same, in which faith 
constantly he died, as is said at Vilvorde, and now 
resteth with the glorious company of Christ's mar- 
tyrs blessedly in the Lord, who be blessed in all 
His saints. Amen." 



CHAPTER X. 

TRAPPED AT LAST; OR, DYING FOR THE 
TRUTH. 

" He has outsoared the shadow of our night ; 
Envy and calumny and hate and pain 
Can touch him not and torture not again ^ 
He is secure, and now can never mourn." 

—Shelley. 

" He is strong that can bear another man's weakness." 

— Tyndale. 



THE QUEEN'S BIBLE— THE TRAITOR— THE TRAP— THE WEARY 
YEAR OF IMPRISONMENT— THE TRIUMPH. 

Two years (1533— 15 3 5) were spent by Tyndale in 
Antwerp, and while engaged in the manner that 
Foxe described in the paragraph which we quoted 
in the last chapter, he was also employed in revising 
his New Testament. The Bishop of Durham says 
of this second edition : — 

" One of the few copies of this edition which have 
been preserved is of touching interest. Among the 
men who had suffered for aiding in the circulation 
of the earlier editions of the Testament was a 
merchant-adventurer of Antwerp, Mr. Harrnan, who 
seems to have applied to Queen Anne Boleyn for 



TRAPPED AT LAST. 99 

redress. The Queen listened to the plea which 
was urged in his favour, and by her intervention 
he was restored to the freedom and privileges of 
which he had been deprived. Tyndale could not 
fail to hear of her good offices, and he acknow- 
ledged them by a royal gift. He was at the time 
engaged in superintending the printing of his re- 
vised New Testament, and of this he caused one 
copy to be struck off on vellum and beautifully 
illuminated. No preface or dedication or name 
mars the simple integrity of this copy. Only on 
the gilded edges in faded red letters runs the 
simple title, Anna Begina Anglicc. The copy was 
bequeathed to the British Museum by the Eev. C. 
M. Cracherode in 1 799." 

It was almost his last sacrifice for England, for 
in the year 1535 Tyndale was arrested. He had, 
during this last stay in Antwerp, resided with Thomas 
Poyntz, an English merchant who had settled in that 
town. This gave Tyndale protection against liability 
of arrest, so long as he kept within the house of his 
patron and friend. From Poyntz, Eoxe obtained 
an account of Tyndale's capture, and we subjoin 
it here :— 

" William Tyndale, being in the town of Antwerp, 
had been lodged about one whole year in the house 
of Thomas Poyntz, an Englishman. About which 
time there came thither one out of England whose 
name was Henry Philips, a comely fellow, like as 
he had been a gentleman, having a servant with 



ioo MEN WITH A MISSION. 

him ; but wherefore he came, or for what purpose 
he was sent thither, no man could tell." 

This man basely ingratiated himself into Tyndale's 
favour, and although Poyntz distrusted him, even 
he did not suspect that Philips was capable of the 
baseness of betraying Tyndale to his death. 

At length the time arrived when Philips' arrange- 
ments for the capture of Tyndale were completed, 
and when perhaps this Judas had received the 
price of blood. It happened that Poyntz " went 
forth to a town being eighteen miles from Antwerp, 
where he had business to do for the space of a 
month or six weeks. And in the time of his 
absence Henry Philips came again to Antwerp, to 
the house of Poyntz, and coming in spake with his 
wife, asking her for Master Tyndale, and whether 
he would dine there with him ; saying, ' What good 
meat shall we have ? ' She answered, ' Such as the 
market will give.' Then went he forth again (as it 
is thought) to provide, and set the officers whom he 
brought with him from Brussels in the street and 
about the door. Then about noon he came again 
and went to Master Tyndale and desired him to 
lend him forty shillings ; ' for/ said he, ' I lost my 
purse this morning, coming over at the passage 
between this and Mechlin/ So Tyndale took him 
forty shillings, which was easy to be had of him, if 
he had it ; for in the wily subtleties of this world 
he was simple and inexpert. Then said Philips, 
'Master Tyndale, you shall be my guest here this 



TRAPPED AT LAST. 101 

day.' ' No,' said Tyndale ; * I go forth this day to 
dinner, and you shall go with me, and be my 
guest, where you shall be welcome.' So when it 
was dinner-time Tyndale went forth with Philips, 
and at the going forth of Poyntz' s house was a long 
narrow entry, so that two could not go in afront. 
Master Tyndale would have put Philips before him, 
but Philips would in no wise, but put Master 
Tyndale before, for that he pretended to show great 
humility. So, Master Tyndale being a man of no 
great stature, went before, and Philips, a tall comely 
person, followed behind him ; who had set officers 
on either side of the door upon two seats, who, 
being there, might see who came in at the entry ; 
and corning through the same entry, Philips pointed 
with his finger over Master Tyndale's head down to 
him, that the officers who sat at the door might 
see that it was he whom they should take, as the 
officers that took Master Tyndale afterwards told 
Poyntz, and said to Poyntz, when they had laid him 
in prison, that they pitied to see his simplicity 
when they took him. Then they took him and 
brought him to the Emperor's attorney, or Procuror- 
General, where he dined. Then came the Procuror- 
General to the house of Poyntz, and sent away all 
that was there of Master Tynd ale's, as well his 
books as other things ; and from thence Tyndale 
was had to the castle of Filford (Vilvorde), eighteen 
English miles from Antwerp, and there he remained 
until he was put to death." 



io? MEN WITH A MISSION. 

Demaus assigns the 23 rd or the 24th of May 
1535 as the probable date of Tyndale's arrest. Tor 
more than a year the exile lingered in confinement 
before he was put to death. 

His friend Poyntz did not desert Tyndale in this 
calamity, but at imminent risk of his own life he 
busied himself in fruitless efforts to save the life of 
the man whom he had learned to love. 

" Brother/' he says, writing to John Poyntz, a 
gentleman at the English Court, "the knowledge 
that I have of this man causes me to write as my 
conscience binds me; for the King's Grace should 
have of him, at this day, as high a treasure as of 
honour : one man living there is not that has been 
of greater reputation." 

The efforts of Poyntz were alas useless, and he 
only brought himself into peril by his advocacy on 
behalf of Tyndale. Poyntz was arrested, and for 
four months he also was kept a prisoner. Indeed, 
had he not contrived to escape, he would probably 
have shared the fate of his friend. 

The condemnation of Tyndale was already a 
foregone conclusion. The formality of a trial was 
indeed observed in his case, but he himself well 
knew that, with such enemies as his translation of 
the Scriptures had made for him, there was but one 
issue to his imprisonment. 

One solitary letter, written during the winter 
of 153 5, and addressed to the governor of the 
castle in which he was confined, has indeed been 



TRAPPED AT LAST. 103 

preserved. We subjoin Demaus' translation of 
it: — 

" I believe, right worshipful, that you are not 
ignorant of what has been determined concerning 
me (by the Council of Brabant) ; therefore I entreat 
your Lordship, and that by the Lord Jesus, that if 
I am to remain here (in Vilvorde) during the winter, 
you will request the Procureur to be kind enough 
to send me from my goods which he has in his pos- 
session a warmer cap, for I suffer extremely from 
cold in the head, being afflicted with a perpetual 
catarrh, which is considerably increased in the cell. 
A warmer coat also, for that which I have is very 
thin : also a piece of cloth to patch my leggings : 
my overcoat has been worn out ; my shirts are also 
worn out. He has a woollen shirt of mine, if he 
will be kind enough to send it. I have also with 
him leggings of thicker cloth for putting on above ; 
he also has warmer caps for wearing at night. I 
wish also his permission to have a candle in the 
evening, for it is wearisome to sit alone in the dark. 
But, above all, I entreat and beseech your clemency 
to be urgent with the Procureur that he may kindly 
permit me to have my Hebrew Bible, Hebrew Gram- 
mar, and Hebrew Dictionary, that I may spend my 
time with that study. And, in return, may you 
obtain your dearest wish, provided always it be con- 
sistent with the salvation of your soul. But if any 
other resolution has been come to concerning me, that 



104 MEN WITH A MISSION, 

I must remain during the whole winter, I shall be 
patient, abiding the will of God, to the glory of the 
Grace of my Lord Jesus Christ, whose Spirit, I pray, 
may ever direct your heart. Amen. 

W. Tyndale." 

Says Foxe : " At last, after much reasoning, where 
no reason would serve, although he deserved no 
death, he was condemned by virtue of the Emperor's 
decree, made in the Assembly at Augsburg, and, 
upon the same, brought forth to the place of execu- 
tion, was there tied to the stake, and then strangled 
first by the hangman, and afterwards with fire con- 
sumed in the morning, at the town of Filford, 25 th 
of October a.d. 1536; crying thus at the stake with 
a fervent zeal and loud voice, ' Lord ! open the King 
of England's eyes ! ' " 

Concerning Tyndale himself Dr. Stoughton justly 
remarks : " Tyndale was eminently a great man, 
great in mind and heart and enterprise. His in- 
tellectual endowments were of an order to render 
him a match in controversy with no less a personage 
than the illustrious Sir Thomas More. The qualities 
of his heart were as remarkable as those of his head. 
He combined a calm and steady heroism with a 
childlike simplicity. No man was ever more free 
from duplicity, more full of meekness, and at the 
same time more elevated in soul by a manly courage. 
Ever as in his great Taskmaster's eye, he pursued 
his labours in obscurity and exile, reaping no earthly 



TRAPPED AT LAST. 105 

benefit whatever, and looking for no reward but the 
smile of his Heavenly Father." 

Nothing need be added to these generous and 
just sentences, except that Tyndale's full merit will 
only be known and confessed when the secrets of 
all hearts are opened. He professed himself to be 
ready to wait for his reward until the great day of 
God, and then it will be seen that William Tyndale 
has not been far behind the apostles of the Lamb :— 

" How our hearts burnt within us at the scene ! 
Whence this brave bound o'er limits fixed to man ? 
His God sustains him in the final hour ! 
His final hour brings glory to his God ! 
Sweet peace, and heavenly hope, and humble joy, 
Divinely beam in his exalted soul ; 
Destruction gilds, and crowns him for the skies 
With incommunicable lustre bright." 

— Young. 



THE END. 



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